Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Chris, On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 2:22 AM, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.comwrote: Hi PGC With respect, you've embarked on a fools errand there, PGC. Always, but people's positions can change over time, even if it sometimes takes awhile or a second. That's how it is with me, so why not? Given the way John has framed the task any contribution made by xyz will end up not being a contribution in philosophy. Take Charles Pierce who pretty much founded semiotics and made contributions in fields as diverse as psychology and chemistry; or Frege who invented predicate logic; or Descartes work in mathematics, or Leibniz's invention of calculus; the big punch line has to be that either these people were not philosophers or their important contributions were not in philosophy. Which is why I picked a fictional author commenting non-fiction. This is plausibly philosophy by John's measure, as it cannot be argued that Huxley is expert in some hard science field, nor that he is writing fiction. And the result was to publish widely that first person subjective experience of mystical states is not superstitious legend and that it is orders of magnitude removed from effects of relaxation, stimulation, lowering of inhibition, and the usual candidates for intoxication: there exists a first person experience matching certain kinds of mystical descriptions across cultures in front of modern context. Whats needed is a defense of philosophy. John's task is based on an unjustified assumption that he made in his opening post. He argues that philosophers are just reporters; that in, for example, the field of method they just report on what scientists have always done. Thats just uninformed garbage. Firstly, there hasn't ever been a method scientists have always employed. Secondly, there is always an argument between scientists over how to proceed correctly. This is particularly evident in the cognitive sciences where there is an acute difficulty in equating some objective measurement to some subjective experience. The benefits and pitfalls of quantitative over qualitative methodologies is argued about within neuroscience departments the world over. Students are preached to about Popper and falsificationism in one lecture and in the next they are told that this methodology is inherently should be abandoned. Even in physics, the 'hardest' of hard sciences, there is trouble afoot with string theory, and a debate rages as to whether it is falsifiable, and then whether that matters. You take your stand and you argue your case and in doing so you engage in: philosophy. So, even if it is a scientist arguing that qualitative methods are (or are not) worth persuing, he is making a philosophical argument. I guess he'd say that this relativizes philosophy to defending just chatting around. But chatter is far from that simple. For me in crude shorthand for this thread: Christianity went nutts in our cultural flux, too many crusades - over-secularization - persistence of the hard science myth in the last 200 years and no soft stuff! Thus, it appears we need philosophy to cover a potential god gap in the name of humanist knowledge encoded by natural languages, because otherwise: for what?-teleology problem; which will then be, by definition, too soft to be hard (because we fight about that) and therefore soft b.s. Remove that layer and you just have, I agree here, you take your stand, the taboos of belief, theology, and various mysticisms. Negations and viagra myth included ;-) but viagra exists! YOU CANNOT DENY THAT... Still, I'd want to know why Huxley doesn't count. Also because John says just altered perception, we know this and Huxley philosophized No! This is new to and not expected by modern western secularized thought. It is better than the things that we alter our perception with + science and tech furnish us with tools to make them less harmful and places us in front of these engineering questions... And the cultural meme of engineering new molecules, finding new doors as Huxley's philosophy calls for and inspired chemists like Shulgin to explore chemistry-wise, is being accelerated, albeit in a harmful sense, by prohibition. That secular philosophy had results, the publication influenced people and their workflows. In hard domains like chemistry to this very day. Still too soft for viagrans I suppose... ;-) PGC Even John, right now, is doing the very same thing. He is engaging in philosophy. He is expending all this effort on what he has argued is worthless. He is one big hypocrite whose very position defeats itself. The position that the only things that have value are tangible scientific results is of course not in itself a scientific result. John is an unwitting positivist who falls into the same logical trap all positivists do. All the best -- Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 22:58:21 +0200 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? From
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
I´m very sorry John for my though response. But there are a lot of things to consider in the case and to extract a phrase from its context is not fair play. Just that. 2013/9/8 Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Feyerabend made the best analysis of the endavour of Galileo in his fight for the truth. No other presented the intellectual work of Galileo in his gigantic intelectual dimension that was, more even than the case of Einstenin and Feyerabend presented it as no one before. Having studied and put clear all the reasoning steps of Galileo in relation with their Aristotelian opponents and extracted invaluable lessons for the methodology of science I think that Feyerabend deserve some respect , you idiot. Please abstain from insults and disqualifications unless you have enough knowledge of the case and present your arguments. 2013/9/8 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 6:48 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Yes, your reading Feyerabend, suggests that [...] Speaking of things that give philosophy a bad name consider these words of wisdom from Feyerabend: The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism. No doubt there are those on this list who will try to make excuses for the above moronic statement, but the fact remains that most professional philosophers think any provocative statement can make them stand out no matter how dimwitted it is. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 5:52 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sunday, September 8, 2013 4:42:02 PM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Sent from my iPad On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 chris peck chris_...@hotmail.com wrote: Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program. I don't have any problem with Popper's comments here. I see no reason whatsoever for 'Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science' to be concerned in the slightest. On 08.09.2013, at 22:28, John Clark johnk...@gmail.com wrote: Yes I know, fans of Popper are not concerned in the slightest with their hero making that moronic statement, and Popper called himself a philosopher; and that is exactly how philosophy gets a bad name. People misunderstand Popper here. Apparently even Popper misunderstood Popper because, to his credit, he admitted he was wrong about Darwin; most other philosophers would rather eat ground glass than admit they were wrong. It's just a pity that it took this great philosopher of science 119 years after the publication of The Origin Of Species to figure out that Darwin was a scientist. I guess philosophers are just slow learners Furthermore, in regarding natural selection as untestable he followed in the footsteps of many Darwinists. Should a good philosopher be following in somebody's footsteps or should he tell him he's going in the wrong direction? It was quite common to think that the concept of 'survival of the fittest' involved circular reasoning and was therefore tautological. ie. 'fittest' is defined as 'those that survive' and so 'survival of the fittest' amounts to saying 'the survivors survive'. Darwin gave a new meaning to the word, fittest means passing on more genes that endure (survive) to the next generation than somebody who is less fit. Darwin knew nothing about genes. Yes, and evolutionary fitness has nothing do with the quantity of winning genes - this is a Eugenicist misinterpretation of evolution. Fitness is about the circumstantial appropriateness of mutations, not about hereditary supremacy. A sudden climate change makes entire classes of 'more fit' genes 'less fit' over night. Evolution is not a race or striving for success through superior engineering - that is utter horseshit. Yes. A common error is to equate evolution with progress -- one sees that a lot in mainstream use of the terms. I believe that neo-Darwinism is a great scientific theory, and that it does explain the origin of biological complexity, namely humans. But it is easy to misinterpret it or take it too far. For example, by saying things like human beings are more evolved than bacteria which is nonsense. Telmo. Thanks, Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
I think that there are real progress that can be even measured in terms of entropic order. That a man embodies more structure and organization than a bacteria is objective and measurable, and it is a product of more emergent levels of evolution. In concrete the human being includes the eucariotic level, the multicelularity level and human society level, that are aggregations of coordinated individuals to achieve an individuality of an higher level. These levels are absent in bacteria . What is not true is that human beings are more adapted than bacteria. That is not true. Because there is no objective and absolute measure of adaptation. It ever depends on the concrete environment, and varies a lot. 2013/9/9 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 5:52 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sunday, September 8, 2013 4:42:02 PM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Sent from my iPad On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 chris peck chris_...@hotmail.com wrote: Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program. I don't have any problem with Popper's comments here. I see no reason whatsoever for 'Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science' to be concerned in the slightest. On 08.09.2013, at 22:28, John Clark johnk...@gmail.com wrote: Yes I know, fans of Popper are not concerned in the slightest with their hero making that moronic statement, and Popper called himself a philosopher; and that is exactly how philosophy gets a bad name. People misunderstand Popper here. Apparently even Popper misunderstood Popper because, to his credit, he admitted he was wrong about Darwin; most other philosophers would rather eat ground glass than admit they were wrong. It's just a pity that it took this great philosopher of science 119 years after the publication of The Origin Of Species to figure out that Darwin was a scientist. I guess philosophers are just slow learners Furthermore, in regarding natural selection as untestable he followed in the footsteps of many Darwinists. Should a good philosopher be following in somebody's footsteps or should he tell him he's going in the wrong direction? It was quite common to think that the concept of 'survival of the fittest' involved circular reasoning and was therefore tautological. ie. 'fittest' is defined as 'those that survive' and so 'survival of the fittest' amounts to saying 'the survivors survive'. Darwin gave a new meaning to the word, fittest means passing on more genes that endure (survive) to the next generation than somebody who is less fit. Darwin knew nothing about genes. Yes, and evolutionary fitness has nothing do with the quantity of winning genes - this is a Eugenicist misinterpretation of evolution. Fitness is about the circumstantial appropriateness of mutations, not about hereditary supremacy. A sudden climate change makes entire classes of 'more fit' genes 'less fit' over night. Evolution is not a race or striving for success through superior engineering - that is utter horseshit. Yes. A common error is to equate evolution with progress -- one sees that a lot in mainstream use of the terms. I believe that neo-Darwinism is a great scientific theory, and that it does explain the origin of biological complexity, namely humans. But it is easy to misinterpret it or take it too far. For example, by saying things like human beings are more evolved than bacteria which is nonsense. Telmo. Thanks, Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Hi Alberto, On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: I think that there are real progress that can be even measured in terms of entropic order. That a man embodies more structure and organization than a bacteria is objective and measurable, and it is a product of more emergent levels of evolution. In concrete the human being includes the eucariotic level, the multicelularity level and human society level, that are aggregations of coordinated individuals to achieve an individuality of an higher level. These levels are absent in bacteria . Ok, there's an arrow of complexification, that's undeniable. I'm not convinced that Darwinism alone explains that. One of the reasons for my scepticism is the failure of ALife models to replicate unbounded complexification. My favourite attempt in this domain is the Echo model by John Holland -- which is beautiful but didn't work in this sense. There's also Tierra/Avida, where you get a lot of interesting stuff but no unbounded complexification. One idea I heard but don't know whom to attribute to is this: evolutionary complexification is just an artefact of the simplicity of the initial state. The idea being that the laws of physics inherently contain a pressure towards a certain level of complexity and that evolution is just following the path of least resitance, in a way. It is then conceivable that there is a state of equilibrium that we haven't reached yet and that complexification will halt at some point. This is wild speculation, of course, but I like to ponder on this hypothesis. What is not true is that human beings are more adapted than bacteria. That is not true. Because there is no objective and absolute measure of adaptation. It ever depends on the concrete environment, and varies a lot. Humm... I think ecologists are able to estimate the likelihood of a species going extinct. I'd argue that this could be taken as a measure of adaption. Telmo. 2013/9/9 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 5:52 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sunday, September 8, 2013 4:42:02 PM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Sent from my iPad On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 chris peck chris_...@hotmail.com wrote: Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program. I don't have any problem with Popper's comments here. I see no reason whatsoever for 'Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science' to be concerned in the slightest. On 08.09.2013, at 22:28, John Clark johnk...@gmail.com wrote: Yes I know, fans of Popper are not concerned in the slightest with their hero making that moronic statement, and Popper called himself a philosopher; and that is exactly how philosophy gets a bad name. People misunderstand Popper here. Apparently even Popper misunderstood Popper because, to his credit, he admitted he was wrong about Darwin; most other philosophers would rather eat ground glass than admit they were wrong. It's just a pity that it took this great philosopher of science 119 years after the publication of The Origin Of Species to figure out that Darwin was a scientist. I guess philosophers are just slow learners Furthermore, in regarding natural selection as untestable he followed in the footsteps of many Darwinists. Should a good philosopher be following in somebody's footsteps or should he tell him he's going in the wrong direction? It was quite common to think that the concept of 'survival of the fittest' involved circular reasoning and was therefore tautological. ie. 'fittest' is defined as 'those that survive' and so 'survival of the fittest' amounts to saying 'the survivors survive'. Darwin gave a new meaning to the word, fittest means passing on more genes that endure (survive) to the next generation than somebody who is less fit. Darwin knew nothing about genes. Yes, and evolutionary fitness has nothing do with the quantity of winning genes - this is a Eugenicist misinterpretation of evolution. Fitness is about the circumstantial appropriateness of mutations, not about hereditary supremacy. A sudden climate change makes entire classes of 'more fit' genes 'less fit' over night. Evolution is not a race or striving for success through superior engineering - that is utter horseshit. Yes. A common error is to equate evolution with progress -- one sees that a lot in mainstream use of the terms. I believe that neo-Darwinism is a great scientific theory, and that it does explain the origin of biological complexity, namely humans. But it is easy to misinterpret it or take it too far. For example, by saying things like human beings are more evolved than bacteria which is nonsense. Telmo. Thanks, Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
PD: Yesterday I saw an advertising in a wall: Metaphysical Tarot, call (number) 2013/9/9 Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com John: I have been working in AI and I can say you that such indetermination in the concepts is very common when software designers create their semantic networks, specially when trying to mimic how human reasoning. That is unavoidable, because both Philosophers and AI experts try to define the basic human concepts, the structure of the mind and how it works. To have a clear definition of something you need clear defined base concepts in terms of which you combine them to get a definition. But what happens when we are defining such fundamental concepts? There is no possible clear definition. you go around and around until you find either more basic concepts in terms of which yo define your previous basic concepts or you create circular definitions among fundamental concepts. But if you don´t accept the challenge, you will never push the limits of human knowledge about basic and deep human questions that preoccupied the ancient philosophers. Modernity can be seen as the renounce of this challenge. Not only the renounce to take this challenge seriously, but to feel discomfort and anger when someone take such challenge seriously. It is not a surprise to find that this hole is now being filled with new age crap and esoteric charlatans, Hollywood philosophers and TV starts. That is because people can not live without finding responses to such deep questions (and this has a clear evolutionary explanation, to give a hook for your reductionist mind). What in the past was the preoccupation of people like Socrates, Plato Aristotle, Aquinas, Heiddegger etc to name a few examples, it is now the task of people like Oprah 2013/9/6 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com This is what gives philosophers a bad name! In just one day people have sent the following philosophical gems to the list, enough hot air to signifacantly contribute to global warming, * I also do not “KNOW” whether or not I really do have “free will”. But if I do [blah blah] * How do you explain the experience of “free will” then? * The experience of free will is not a snap shot, instead it [blah blah] * If free will exists (and also of course that we have it) then [blah blah] * If instead free will does not in fact exist, then [blah blah] * consciousness necessarily must exist in the first place in order for free will to exist. * Are you maintain that the experience of free will does not itself exist? * Can you conceive of “free will” without introducing a subject in which it arises and is experienced? And so it goes, on and on arguing about if free will exists or not, but never once does anybody stop to ask what the hell free will means before giving their opinion about it's existence. People argue passionately but they don't know what they're talking about, by that I don't mean that what they are saying is wrong, I mean that they quite literally DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT. When he was a student at Princeton Richard Feynman had an encounter with philosophers, years later this is what he had to say about it and why he developed a contempt not for philosophy but for philosophers. I gave this quotation before but apparently it needs repeating: In the Graduate College dining room at Princeton everybody used to sit with his own group. I sat with the physicists, but after a bit I thought: It would be nice to see what the rest of the world is doing, so I'll sit for a week or two in each of the other groups. When I sat with the philosophers I listened to them discuss very seriously a book called Process and Reality by Whitehead. They were using words in a funny way, and I couldn't quite understand what they were saying. Now I didn't want to interrupt them in their own conversation and keep asking them to explain something, and on the few occasions that I did, they'd try to explain it to me, but I still didn't get it. Finally they invited me to come to their seminar. They had a seminar that was like, a class. It had been meeting once a week to discuss a new chapter out of Process and Reality - some guy would give a report on it and then there would be a discussion. I went to this seminar promising myself to keep my mouth shut, reminding myself that I didn't know anything about the subject, and I was going there just to watch. What happened there was typical - so typical that it was unbelievable, but true. First of all, I sat there without saying anything, which is almost unbelievable, but also true. A student gave a report on the chapter to be studied that week. In it Whitehead kept using the words essential object in a particular technical way that presumably he had defined, but that I didn't understand. After some discussion as to what essential object meant, the professor leading the seminar said something meant to clarify
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Telmo: I don´t know if that process of emergence of levels is the sole effect of a darwinian process. We can't know it. what is clear is that Darwinism has a explanation for it. And this applies too to the social level. http://www.cogsci.msu.edu/DSS/2006-2007/Wilson/Rethinking_July_20.pdf However a darwinian process is a natural process. In a block universe, there is no such darwinian process (because there is no process of any kind at all). Simply some paths in the block universe maintain the entropy constant against the surroundings. These paths are living beings along their lines of time. Usually the computational models, like any other programs are predictable: they work with your assumptions and produce the results that you expect. real evolution is pervasive . It does not work with limited assumptions and resources and levels. This paper is very interesting. How the evolutionary pressures make stable or unstable the aggregation of individuals to create higher level individuals and what are the mechanisms of cohesion: http://web.pdx.edu/~jeff/group_sel_workshop/michod_roze.pdf 2013/9/9 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com Hi Alberto, On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: I think that there are real progress that can be even measured in terms of entropic order. That a man embodies more structure and organization than a bacteria is objective and measurable, and it is a product of more emergent levels of evolution. In concrete the human being includes the eucariotic level, the multicelularity level and human society level, that are aggregations of coordinated individuals to achieve an individuality of an higher level. These levels are absent in bacteria . Ok, there's an arrow of complexification, that's undeniable. I'm not convinced that Darwinism alone explains that. One of the reasons for my scepticism is the failure of ALife models to replicate unbounded complexification. My favourite attempt in this domain is the Echo model by John Holland -- which is beautiful but didn't work in this sense. There's also Tierra/Avida, where you get a lot of interesting stuff but no unbounded complexification. One idea I heard but don't know whom to attribute to is this: evolutionary complexification is just an artefact of the simplicity of the initial state. The idea being that the laws of physics inherently contain a pressure towards a certain level of complexity and that evolution is just following the path of least resitance, in a way. It is then conceivable that there is a state of equilibrium that we haven't reached yet and that complexification will halt at some point. This is wild speculation, of course, but I like to ponder on this hypothesis. What is not true is that human beings are more adapted than bacteria. That is not true. Because there is no objective and absolute measure of adaptation. It ever depends on the concrete environment, and varies a lot. Humm... I think ecologists are able to estimate the likelihood of a species going extinct. I'd argue that this could be taken as a measure of adaption. Telmo. 2013/9/9 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 5:52 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sunday, September 8, 2013 4:42:02 PM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Sent from my iPad On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 chris peck chris_...@hotmail.com wrote: Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program. I don't have any problem with Popper's comments here. I see no reason whatsoever for 'Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science' to be concerned in the slightest. On 08.09.2013, at 22:28, John Clark johnk...@gmail.com wrote: Yes I know, fans of Popper are not concerned in the slightest with their hero making that moronic statement, and Popper called himself a philosopher; and that is exactly how philosophy gets a bad name. People misunderstand Popper here. Apparently even Popper misunderstood Popper because, to his credit, he admitted he was wrong about Darwin; most other philosophers would rather eat ground glass than admit they were wrong. It's just a pity that it took this great philosopher of science 119 years after the publication of The Origin Of Species to figure out that Darwin was a scientist. I guess philosophers are just slow learners Furthermore, in regarding natural selection as untestable he followed in the footsteps of many Darwinists. Should a good philosopher be following in somebody's footsteps or should he tell him he's going in the wrong direction? It was quite common to think that the concept of 'survival of the fittest' involved circular reasoning and was therefore tautological. ie. 'fittest' is defined as 'those that survive' and
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On 08 Sep 2013, at 22:39, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Feyerabend made the best analysis of the endavour of Galileo in his fight for the truth. No other presented the intellectual work of Galileo in his gigantic intelectual dimension that was, more even than the case of Einstenin and Feyerabend presented it as no one before. Having studied and put clear all the reasoning steps of Galileo in relation with their Aristotelian opponents and extracted invaluable lessons for the methodology of science I think that Feyerabend deserve some respect , you idiot. Please abstain from insults and disqualifications unless you have enough knowledge of the case and present your arguments. Despite I do not like very much Feyerabend, and disgaree with its overal philosophy of science, I do agree with him on Galileo. Perhaps by chance or opportunity, the church was correct when asking Galileo to admit that he was presenting a theory, not a certainty. Galileo was blinded by its Aristotelianistic feeling and accepted only for the form. Of course he should have asked the Church to do the same, but that would have been dangerous for him. (And this points on another problem to judge philosophers in obscurantist period, they often hide or disguise their ideas). Bruno 2013/9/8 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 6:48 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Yes, your reading Feyerabend, suggests that [...] Speaking of things that give philosophy a bad name consider these words of wisdom from Feyerabend: The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism. No doubt there are those on this list who will try to make excuses for the above moronic statement, but the fact remains that most professional philosophers think any provocative statement can make them stand out no matter how dimwitted it is. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On 09 Sep 2013, at 04:10, chris peck wrote: Hi John Nearly a century ago J.B.S. Haldane was confronted with a bonehead who said he thought Evolution was not a scientific theory because he was unable to provide a hypothetical way it could be disproved. In response Haldane thundered RABBITS IN THE PRECAMBRIAN !. It wasn't evolution that Popper thought was metaphysics, it was natural selection and the reason that he thought it untestable was. ... , actually, why bother? I believe sincerity is a hugely overrated virtue, I have more respect for somebody insincerely right than sincerely wrong. That you have a hard on for insincerity comes across loud and clear, John. You needn't point it out. Lol. Good point. At least it is nice that John can be sincere on this point. Bruno But, here's a question for you, what about people who are insincere and wrong such as yourself ? Does your love of insincerity outweigh your contempt for error just enough to provide a morsel of self respect? Btw. Did you use to post as Major Higgs Boson, or something, on other boards? The perpetual grumpiness and tortuous attempts to be clever really ring a bell for some reason. Obviously there are many grumpy people in the world so I know its a long shot. Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2013 16:47:32 -0400 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? From: johnkcl...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 12:57 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Mach was the big physicist and thermodynamicist, Mach's Principle. Ernst Mach was a big philosopher but he was more of a medium size physicist. He wrote his most important scientific paper in 1887, but the man lived till 1916 and is far far better remembered as a philosopher than a scientist. He spent nearly 30 years on philosophy and in opposing Quantum Mechanics, Einstein's Theory of Relativity both general and special, and even the atomic theory of matter. He opposed these superb scientific theories for purely philosophical reasons I might add. Yet another reason philosophy has a bad name. The great philosophical discoveries were made by Darwin and Mendel and Watson and Crick and Maxwell and Einstein and Bohr and Heisenberg and Feynman and Godel and Turing. None of these people called themselves philosophers and some even expressed contempt for the subject, but they made the great philosophical discoveries of the age nevertheless. Let me issue a challenge to all on this list: Tell me one thing, just one thing, that people who call themselves philosophers have discovered in the last 2 centuries that is deep, clear, precise, unexpected, and true that scientists had not discovered long before. John K Clark All I am saying that often in public discourses' I will see physicists, very hard case ones. delve into logical possitivism. They may also enjoy frosted flakes, as well, but the do the LP dance sometimes. But, what of it? It's simply my experience of these chats. I do really like it when philosophers do go deep into the sciences though. It clicks for me. -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 9:51 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? Do they deny the existence of electrons? quarks? as Mach denied atoms. Brent On 9/7/2013 3:52 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Yet, there's lots of scientists in public forums like this, who embrace logical positivism. I am not saying this is a good thing, but something I have experienced. -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 4:16 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On 9/7/2013 12:40 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That's right. I´m not joking if i say that the thing that discredited philosophers definitively was relativity, quantum mechanics and their realization: the atomic bomb. That is the event that raised physicalism, a branch of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and discredited any other way of thinking. If by physicalism you mean the meta- of physics, then it's not positivism. Positivism hasn't been considered a good meta-physics since Mach. Too many unobservable things: atoms, photons, quarks, virtual particles,... turned out to make good empirical models. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On 09 Sep 2013, at 11:58, Telmo Menezes wrote: Hi Alberto, On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: I think that there are real progress that can be even measured in terms of entropic order. That a man embodies more structure and organization than a bacteria is objective and measurable, and it is a product of more emergent levels of evolution. In concrete the human being includes the eucariotic level, the multicelularity level and human society level, that are aggregations of coordinated individuals to achieve an individuality of an higher level. These levels are absent in bacteria . Ok, there's an arrow of complexification, that's undeniable. I'm not convinced that Darwinism alone explains that. One of the reasons for my scepticism is the failure of ALife models to replicate unbounded complexification. My favourite attempt in this domain is the Echo model by John Holland -- which is beautiful but didn't work in this sense. There's also Tierra/Avida, where you get a lot of interesting stuff but no unbounded complexification. One idea I heard but don't know whom to attribute to is this: evolutionary complexification is just an artefact of the simplicity of the initial state. The idea being that the laws of physics inherently contain a pressure towards a certain level of complexity and that evolution is just following the path of least resitance, in a way. It is then conceivable that there is a state of equilibrium that we haven't reached yet and that complexification will halt at some point. This is wild speculation, of course, but I like to ponder on this hypothesis. Of course the universal dovetailing has unbounded complexity, but evolution (including the rise of the physical laws) is observed only in the first person selective selection. Bruno What is not true is that human beings are more adapted than bacteria. That is not true. Because there is no objective and absolute measure of adaptation. It ever depends on the concrete environment, and varies a lot. Humm... I think ecologists are able to estimate the likelihood of a species going extinct. I'd argue that this could be taken as a measure of adaption. Telmo. 2013/9/9 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 5:52 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sunday, September 8, 2013 4:42:02 PM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Sent from my iPad On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 chris peck chris_...@hotmail.com wrote: Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program. I don't have any problem with Popper's comments here. I see no reason whatsoever for 'Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science' to be concerned in the slightest. On 08.09.2013, at 22:28, John Clark johnk...@gmail.com wrote: Yes I know, fans of Popper are not concerned in the slightest with their hero making that moronic statement, and Popper called himself a philosopher; and that is exactly how philosophy gets a bad name. People misunderstand Popper here. Apparently even Popper misunderstood Popper because, to his credit, he admitted he was wrong about Darwin; most other philosophers would rather eat ground glass than admit they were wrong. It's just a pity that it took this great philosopher of science 119 years after the publication of The Origin Of Species to figure out that Darwin was a scientist. I guess philosophers are just slow learners Furthermore, in regarding natural selection as untestable he followed in the footsteps of many Darwinists. Should a good philosopher be following in somebody's footsteps or should he tell him he's going in the wrong direction? It was quite common to think that the concept of 'survival of the fittest' involved circular reasoning and was therefore tautological. ie. 'fittest' is defined as 'those that survive' and so 'survival of the fittest' amounts to saying 'the survivors survive'. Darwin gave a new meaning to the word, fittest means passing on more genes that endure (survive) to the next generation than somebody who is less fit. Darwin knew nothing about genes. Yes, and evolutionary fitness has nothing do with the quantity of winning genes - this is a Eugenicist misinterpretation of evolution. Fitness is about the circumstantial appropriateness of mutations, not about hereditary supremacy. A sudden climate change makes entire classes of 'more fit' genes 'less fit' over night. Evolution is not a race or striving for success through superior engineering - that is utter horseshit. Yes. A common error is to equate evolution with progress -- one sees that a lot in mainstream use of the terms. I believe that neo-Darwinism is a great scientific theory, and that it does explain the origin of biological complexity, namely humans. But it is easy to misinterpret it or take it too far. For example, by saying things like human beings are more evolved
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: Telmo: I don´t know if that process of emergence of levels is the sole effect of a darwinian process. We can't know it. what is clear is that Darwinism has a explanation for it. And this applies too to the social level. I agree that it does. http://www.cogsci.msu.edu/DSS/2006-2007/Wilson/Rethinking_July_20.pdf However a darwinian process is a natural process. In a block universe, there is no such darwinian process (because there is no process of any kind at all). Not sure I understand why there is no process of any kind in a block universe. Simply some paths in the block universe maintain the entropy constant against the surroundings. These paths are living beings along their lines of time. I'm not sure I can agree that, for example, a program in the Tierra environment maintains a constant entropy against the environment. Could you describe more precisely what you mean? Usually the computational models, like any other programs are predictable: they work with your assumptions and produce the results that you expect. real evolution is pervasive . It does not work with limited assumptions and resources and levels. But biological darwinism relies on random mutations the same way the computational models do, no? This paper is very interesting. How the evolutionary pressures make stable or unstable the aggregation of individuals to create higher level individuals and what are the mechanisms of cohesion: http://web.pdx.edu/~jeff/group_sel_workshop/michod_roze.pdf Thanks! Will have a read. Telmo. 2013/9/9 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com Hi Alberto, On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: I think that there are real progress that can be even measured in terms of entropic order. That a man embodies more structure and organization than a bacteria is objective and measurable, and it is a product of more emergent levels of evolution. In concrete the human being includes the eucariotic level, the multicelularity level and human society level, that are aggregations of coordinated individuals to achieve an individuality of an higher level. These levels are absent in bacteria . Ok, there's an arrow of complexification, that's undeniable. I'm not convinced that Darwinism alone explains that. One of the reasons for my scepticism is the failure of ALife models to replicate unbounded complexification. My favourite attempt in this domain is the Echo model by John Holland -- which is beautiful but didn't work in this sense. There's also Tierra/Avida, where you get a lot of interesting stuff but no unbounded complexification. One idea I heard but don't know whom to attribute to is this: evolutionary complexification is just an artefact of the simplicity of the initial state. The idea being that the laws of physics inherently contain a pressure towards a certain level of complexity and that evolution is just following the path of least resitance, in a way. It is then conceivable that there is a state of equilibrium that we haven't reached yet and that complexification will halt at some point. This is wild speculation, of course, but I like to ponder on this hypothesis. What is not true is that human beings are more adapted than bacteria. That is not true. Because there is no objective and absolute measure of adaptation. It ever depends on the concrete environment, and varies a lot. Humm... I think ecologists are able to estimate the likelihood of a species going extinct. I'd argue that this could be taken as a measure of adaption. Telmo. 2013/9/9 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 5:52 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sunday, September 8, 2013 4:42:02 PM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Sent from my iPad On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 chris peck chris_...@hotmail.com wrote: Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program. I don't have any problem with Popper's comments here. I see no reason whatsoever for 'Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science' to be concerned in the slightest. On 08.09.2013, at 22:28, John Clark johnk...@gmail.com wrote: Yes I know, fans of Popper are not concerned in the slightest with their hero making that moronic statement, and Popper called himself a philosopher; and that is exactly how philosophy gets a bad name. People misunderstand Popper here. Apparently even Popper misunderstood Popper because, to his credit, he admitted he was wrong about Darwin; most other philosophers would rather eat ground glass than admit they were wrong. It's just a pity that it took this great philosopher of science 119 years after the publication of The Origin Of Species to figure out that
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 4:43 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 09 Sep 2013, at 11:58, Telmo Menezes wrote: Hi Alberto, On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: I think that there are real progress that can be even measured in terms of entropic order. That a man embodies more structure and organization than a bacteria is objective and measurable, and it is a product of more emergent levels of evolution. In concrete the human being includes the eucariotic level, the multicelularity level and human society level, that are aggregations of coordinated individuals to achieve an individuality of an higher level. These levels are absent in bacteria . Ok, there's an arrow of complexification, that's undeniable. I'm not convinced that Darwinism alone explains that. One of the reasons for my scepticism is the failure of ALife models to replicate unbounded complexification. My favourite attempt in this domain is the Echo model by John Holland -- which is beautiful but didn't work in this sense. There's also Tierra/Avida, where you get a lot of interesting stuff but no unbounded complexification. One idea I heard but don't know whom to attribute to is this: evolutionary complexification is just an artefact of the simplicity of the initial state. The idea being that the laws of physics inherently contain a pressure towards a certain level of complexity and that evolution is just following the path of least resitance, in a way. It is then conceivable that there is a state of equilibrium that we haven't reached yet and that complexification will halt at some point. This is wild speculation, of course, but I like to ponder on this hypothesis. Of course the universal dovetailing has unbounded complexity, Or even maybe the Mandelbrot set. A friend of mine uses that as an example of artificial life. I suspect you might agree. but evolution (including the rise of the physical laws) is observed only in the first person selective selection. But could we have simulated evolution (in a simulation that we understand) and unbounded complexity? Telmo. Bruno What is not true is that human beings are more adapted than bacteria. That is not true. Because there is no objective and absolute measure of adaptation. It ever depends on the concrete environment, and varies a lot. Humm... I think ecologists are able to estimate the likelihood of a species going extinct. I'd argue that this could be taken as a measure of adaption. Telmo. 2013/9/9 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 5:52 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Sunday, September 8, 2013 4:42:02 PM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Sent from my iPad On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 chris peck chris_...@hotmail.com wrote: Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program. I don't have any problem with Popper's comments here. I see no reason whatsoever for 'Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science' to be concerned in the slightest. On 08.09.2013, at 22:28, John Clark johnk...@gmail.com wrote: Yes I know, fans of Popper are not concerned in the slightest with their hero making that moronic statement, and Popper called himself a philosopher; and that is exactly how philosophy gets a bad name. People misunderstand Popper here. Apparently even Popper misunderstood Popper because, to his credit, he admitted he was wrong about Darwin; most other philosophers would rather eat ground glass than admit they were wrong. It's just a pity that it took this great philosopher of science 119 years after the publication of The Origin Of Species to figure out that Darwin was a scientist. I guess philosophers are just slow learners Furthermore, in regarding natural selection as untestable he followed in the footsteps of many Darwinists. Should a good philosopher be following in somebody's footsteps or should he tell him he's going in the wrong direction? It was quite common to think that the concept of 'survival of the fittest' involved circular reasoning and was therefore tautological. ie. 'fittest' is defined as 'those that survive' and so 'survival of the fittest' amounts to saying 'the survivors survive'. Darwin gave a new meaning to the word, fittest means passing on more genes that endure (survive) to the next generation than somebody who is less fit. Darwin knew nothing about genes. Yes, and evolutionary fitness has nothing do with the quantity of winning genes - this is a Eugenicist misinterpretation of evolution. Fitness is about the circumstantial appropriateness of mutations, not about hereditary supremacy. A sudden climate change makes entire classes of 'more fit' genes 'less fit' over night. Evolution is not a race or striving for success through superior engineering - that is utter horseshit. Yes. A common error is to equate
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 10:00 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I do not like very much Feyerabend, and disgaree with its overal philosophy of science, I do agree with him on Galileo. OK so let me get this straight, you agree that the church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, you think somebody wanting to burn somebody else alive for saying the earth goes around the sun is much more faithful to reason than the scientist who said it. Bruno, at this point I really don't want to hear any more crap about comp, right now I just want to know if that is what you're really trying to say. Being provocative is all well and good, but not to the point of stupidity. Galileo was blinded Blinded? BLINDED!? Were talking about Galileo and the church but it's Galileo who was blinded!? This is yet another thing that gives philosophy a bad name, I may have heard stupider remarks in my life but I can't think of one right now. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Hi PGC It seems to me that John has just misunderstood Feyerabend. Unsuprising given his misunderstanding of Popper not to mention Darwin. Feyerabend is not really defending the church here. Hes making the point that in order to get his theory out and give it life Galileo had to at some stage abandone pretty much every methodological principle falsificationists, and philosophers of science generally, hold dear. From a Popperian point of view Galileo ought to be regarded as unscrupulous and the church should be regarded as the more reasonable party in the affair. Feyerabend infact champions Galileo's anarchic approach and regards philosophical attempts to prescribe a single method scientists must follow as backward and stultifying. The irony is that John should really be championing Feyerabend because no-one has ever attacked philosophical attempts to define science with greater wit and venom. But it all flies right over his head. Thats if you assume he isnt just flaming. All the best. --- Original Message --- From: Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com Sent: 10 September 2013 5:49 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 8:42 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 10:00 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I do not like very much Feyerabend, and disgaree with its overal philosophy of science, I do agree with him on Galileo. OK so let me get this straight, you agree that the church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, you think somebody wanting to burn somebody else alive for saying the earth goes around the sun is much more faithful to reason than the scientist who said it. Bruno, at this point I really don't want to hear any more crap about comp, right now I just want to know if that is what you're really trying to say. Being provocative is all well and good, but not to the point of stupidity. I think I'm beginning to see how this constitutes an actual argument in John Clark's world... You love to be provocative, which is why its all well and good, revealing today clearly, your penchant for linguistic gaming to intimidate and impress yourself. That's not very scientific, even by your standards. Bruno's statement is consistent with his work. Your statements are consistent with some personalized interpretation of McDonald's reviewed Big Macs. It's you playing rationality's messianic priest here with ad hominem again. But this simply indicates you are perhaps as pompous, arrogant, and insecure, as more and more people are understanding in these lists of late. Galileo was blinded Blinded? BLINDED!? Were talking about Galileo and the church but it's Galileo who was blinded!? This is yet another thing that gives philosophy a bad name, I may have heard stupider remarks in my life but I can't think of one right now. Try reading your own text once, after you write it, with scientific distance instead of vanity. You might find some stupidity in there just like the rest of us to from time to time. Concerning the point: yes blinded, of course. Replacing one model of reality forcefully for another is a violent act. Doesn't matter if Church or your messiah Galileo. Or do you want to make an argument for why John Clark should tell people how to live? What gives philosophy a bad name, adopting your provocative view and tone, is that it is yet another set of perspectives that will not be bullied by John Clark 5th grade size comparisons of intellectual genitalia and precise judgements and conclusions á la this is stupid!. So, I see it's hard for you, but keep your caterwauling down, lest you scare away everybody who'd want to be part of John Clark's empire of the church of the scientific bombastic, exposing stupidity for the rest of the world. PGC John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 8:42 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 10:00 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I do not like very much Feyerabend, and disgaree with its overal philosophy of science, I do agree with him on Galileo. OK so let me get this straight, you agree that the church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, you think somebody wanting to burn somebody else alive for saying the earth goes around the sun is much more faithful to reason than the scientist who said it. Bruno, at this point I really don't want to hear any more crap about comp, right now I just want to know if that is what you're really trying to say. Being provocative is all well and good, but not to the point of stupidity. I think I'm beginning to see how this constitutes an actual argument in John Clark's world... You love to be provocative, which is why its all well and good, revealing today clearly, your penchant for linguistic gaming to intimidate and impress yourself. That's not very scientific, even by your standards. Bruno's statement is consistent with his work. Your statements are consistent with some personalized interpretation of McDonald's reviewed Big Macs. It's you playing rationality's messianic priest here with ad hominem again. But this simply indicates you are perhaps as pompous, arrogant, and insecure, as more and more people are understanding in these lists of late. Galileo was blinded Blinded? BLINDED!? Were talking about Galileo and the church but it's Galileo who was blinded!? This is yet another thing that gives philosophy a bad name, I may have heard stupider remarks in my life but I can't think of one right now. Try reading your own text once, after you write it, with scientific distance instead of vanity. You might find some stupidity in there just like the rest of us to from time to time. Concerning the point: yes blinded, of course. Replacing one model of reality forcefully for another is a violent act. Doesn't matter if Church or your messiah Galileo. Or do you want to make an argument for why John Clark should tell people how to live? What gives philosophy a bad name, adopting your provocative view and tone, is that it is yet another set of perspectives that will not be bullied by John Clark 5th grade size comparisons of intellectual genitalia and precise judgements and conclusions á la this is stupid!. So, I see it's hard for you, but keep your caterwauling down, lest you scare away everybody who'd want to be part of John Clark's empire of the church of the scientific bombastic, exposing stupidity for the rest of the world. PGC John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 10:37 PM, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.comwrote: Hi PGC It seems to me that John has just misunderstood Feyerabend. Unsuprising given his misunderstanding of Popper not to mention Darwin. Feyerabend is not really defending the church here. Hes making the point that in order to get his theory out and give it life Galileo had to at some stage abandone pretty much every methodological principle falsificationists, and philosophers of science generally, hold dear. From a Popperian point of view Galileo ought to be regarded as unscrupulous and the church should be regarded as the more reasonable party in the affair. Technically on this level, sure. John's point, on some days I can only guess, would be that Galileo didn't burn anybody. But witch burning seems to often follow for the overly confident; no matter what the cause is they stand for. Feyerabend infact champions Galileo's anarchic approach and regards philosophical attempts to prescribe a single method scientists must follow as backward and stultifying. Anarchic approach is good ;-) Although Galileo seems to realize the problem on some levels, it was my impression that he tended towards empirical, physical objects, sun, motion etc. even granted the emphasis on thought experiments and contradiction. The irony is that John should really be championing Feyerabend because no-one has ever attacked philosophical attempts to define science with greater wit and venom. But it all flies right over his head. Thats if you assume he isnt just flaming. Another irony is that he attacks church for authoritative witch hunting. After which he commands and frames the question of the differences between Church's and Galileo's ontological stance as: Don't want to hear any crap about comp. Are you really saying that burning people is exactly the same as positing heliocentrism? Direct causality and consequences of held beliefs is less clear than the question would have us believe. I know Christians who are not: 1) Crusading and 2) trying to convince me. PGC All the best. --- Original Message --- From: Platonist Guitar Cowboy multiplecit...@gmail.com Sent: 10 September 2013 5:49 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 8:42 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 10:00 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: I do not like very much Feyerabend, and disgaree with its overal philosophy of science, I do agree with him on Galileo. OK so let me get this straight, you agree that the church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, you think somebody wanting to burn somebody else alive for saying the earth goes around the sun is much more faithful to reason than the scientist who said it. Bruno, at this point I really don't want to hear any more crap about comp, right now I just want to know if that is what you're really trying to say. Being provocative is all well and good, but not to the point of stupidity. I think I'm beginning to see how this constitutes an actual argument in John Clark's world... You love to be provocative, which is why its all well and good, revealing today clearly, your penchant for linguistic gaming to intimidate and impress yourself. That's not very scientific, even by your standards. Bruno's statement is consistent with his work. Your statements are consistent with some personalized interpretation of McDonald's reviewed Big Macs. It's you playing rationality's messianic priest here with ad hominem again. But this simply indicates you are perhaps as pompous, arrogant, and insecure, as more and more people are understanding in these lists of late. Galileo was blinded Blinded? BLINDED!? Were talking about Galileo and the church but it's Galileo who was blinded!? This is yet another thing that gives philosophy a bad name, I may have heard stupider remarks in my life but I can't think of one right now. Try reading your own text once, after you write it, with scientific distance instead of vanity. You might find some stupidity in there just like the rest of us to from time to time. Concerning the point: yes blinded, of course. Replacing one model of reality forcefully for another is a violent act. Doesn't matter if Church or your messiah Galileo. Or do you want to make an argument for why John Clark should tell people how to live? What gives philosophy a bad name, adopting your provocative view and tone, is that it is yet another set of perspectives that will not be bullied by John Clark 5th grade size comparisons of intellectual genitalia and precise judgements and conclusions á la this is stupid!. So, I see it's hard for you, but keep your caterwauling down, lest you scare away everybody who'd want to be part of John Clark's empire of the church of the scientific bombastic
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Mon, Sep 09, 2013 at 11:58:37AM +0200, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Hi Alberto,
On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com
wrote:
I think that there are real progress that can be even measured in terms of
entropic order. That a man embodies more structure and organization than a
bacteria is objective and measurable, and it is a product of more emergent
levels of evolution. In concrete the human being includes the eucariotic
level, the multicelularity level and human society level, that are
aggregations of coordinated individuals to achieve an individuality of an
higher level. These levels are absent in bacteria .
Ok, there's an arrow of complexification, that's undeniable. I'm not
convinced that Darwinism alone explains that. One of the reasons for
my scepticism is the failure of ALife models to replicate unbounded
complexification. My favourite attempt in this domain is the Echo
model by John Holland -- which is beautiful but didn't work in this
sense. There's also Tierra/Avida, where you get a lot of interesting
stuff but no unbounded complexification.
One idea I heard but don't know whom to attribute to is this:
evolutionary complexification is just an artefact of the simplicity of
the initial state. The idea being that the laws of physics inherently
contain a pressure towards a certain level of complexity and that
evolution is just following the path of least resitance, in a way. It
is then conceivable that there is a state of equilibrium that we
haven't reached yet and that complexification will halt at some point.
This is wild speculation, of course, but I like to ponder on this
hypothesis.
I think this idea goes by the name of modal bacter. It was, perhaps, most
forcefully argued in Stephen Gould's 1996 book Full House.
I suspect the idea is wrong, because it fails to explain the
exponential growth of diversity, seemingly observed by
Palaeontologists such as Michael Benton:
@Article{Benton01,
author = {Michael J. Benton},
title ={Biodiversity on Land and in the Sea},
journal = {Geological Journal},
year = 2001,
volume = 36,
pages ={211--230}
}
What is not true is that human beings are more adapted than bacteria. That
is not true. Because there is no objective and absolute measure of
adaptation. It ever depends on the concrete environment, and varies a lot.
Humm... I think ecologists are able to estimate the likelihood of a
species going extinct. I'd argue that this could be taken as a measure
of adaption.
That measure is called persistence, and no, it is not really related to
adaption. For an adaption measure, one good possibility is Mark
Bedau's cumulative evolutionary activity
@InProceedings{Bedau-etal98,
author = {Mark A. Bedau and Emile Snyder and Norman H. Packard},
title ={A Classification of Long-Term Evolutionary Dynamics},
crossref = {ALifeVI},
pages={228--237}
}
--
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Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
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Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Mon, Sep 09, 2013 at 05:26:02PM +0200, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: However a darwinian process is a natural process. In a block universe, there is no such darwinian process (because there is no process of any kind at all). Not sure I understand why there is no process of any kind in a block universe. In a trivial way, there is no change in a block universe. But in a somewhat less trivial way, there are no irreversible processes in a block universe Simply some paths in the block universe maintain the entropy constant against the surroundings. These paths are living beings along their lines of time. I'm not sure I can agree that, for example, a program in the Tierra environment maintains a constant entropy against the environment. Could you describe more precisely what you mean? Its more of an entropy pump. Chris Adami has written some stuff on that, using a related system called Avida. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: it seems to me that John has just misunderstood Feyerabend. It seems to me that the church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself leaves little room for misunderstanding and is as clear as it is imbecilic. And I might add that anyone who feels compelled to defend such a moronic statement is also a moron. Unsuprising given his misunderstanding of Popper Even Popper misunderstood Popper because he admitted (in 1978!) that he was wrong about Darwin. That's almost as good as the church admitting (in the year 2000!) that they may have gone just a bit too far in their treatment of Galileo and maybe just maybe he had a point after all. There have been calls for the church to reopen the case against the astronomer Giordano Bruno and give hin a posthumous apology for burning him alive for saying that the stars were other suns, but so far the church has not done so, but give them time, it's only been 413 years. not to mention Darwin. Please show me that your understanding of Darwin is greater than my own. Dazzle me with your brilliance. From a Popperian point of view Galileo ought to be regarded as unscrupulous and the church should be regarded as the more reasonable party in the affair. Galileo discovered new knowledge for humanity, Popper and Feyerabend discovered nothing, zip zero zilch goose egg. And they were both philosophers and if it really was their point of view that Galileo was unscrupulous and the church reasonable then these ignorant jackasses are yet another reason philosophers have a bad name. And I am STILL waiting for somebody to tell me one thing that bozos like Popper and Feyerabend who call themselves philosophers have discovered in the last 2 centuries that is deep, clear, precise, unexpected and true that scientists had not discovered long before. It seems like a simple request and I have asked 3 times but nobody can think of a damn thing; and yet people continue to tell me how wonderful Feyerabend and Popper were. I think they were like bad movie critics, full of condemnation about how other people made their movie but couldn't make one themselves if you put a gun to their head. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Hi John There is not a scientist alive that learned to do science by reading Karl Popper. Popper was just a reporter, he observed how scientists work and described what he saw. And I don't think Popper was exactly a fount of wisdom. In chapter 37 of his 1976 (1976!!) book Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography Popper says: Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program. Those are Popper's own words not mine, and this is not something to make Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science in general proud. I don't have any problem with Popper's comments here. I see no reason whatsoever for 'Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science' to be concerned in the slightest. First of all, be clear about what Popper said. After describing Darwinism as a metaphysical research program he continues: And yet, the theory is invaluable. I do not see how, without it, our knowledge could have grown as it has done since Darwin. In trying to explain experiments with bacteria which become adapted to, say, penicillin, it is quite clear that we are greatly helped by the theory of natural selection. Although it is metaphysical, it sheds much light upon very concrete and very practical researches. It allows us to study adaptation to a new environment (such as a penicillin-infested environment) in a rational way: it suggests the existence of a mechanism of adaptation, and it allows us even to study in detail the mechanism at work. And it is the only theory so far which does all that. Clearly Popper had huge respect for Darwinism. People misunderstand Popper here. For him 'metaphysical research programmes' were an essential part of science. It isn't a derogative term you know? Furthermore, in regarding natural selection as untestable he followed in the footsteps of many Darwinists. It was quite common to think that the concept of 'survival of the fittest' involved circular reasoning and was therefore tautological. ie. 'fittest' is defined as 'those that survive' and so 'survival of the fittest' amounts to saying 'the survivors survive'. Can't see that ever being falsified. Of course, the gaff is that Darwin never used the term survival of the fittest. It is a gaff, but it isn't a big one. Secondly, I admire Popper for not just accepting Darwinism by rote. For calling things as he saw them, even if he called it wrong. Good for him. The fact he later acknowledged his mistake shows him to be honest. I like people who can admit they were wrong. No. Theres nothing here to embarrass anyone. All the best. Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2013 18:51:40 -0700 From: meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? Do they deny the existence of electrons? quarks? as Mach denied atoms. Brent On 9/7/2013 3:52 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Yet, there's lots of scientists in public forums like this, who embrace logical positivism. I am not saying this is a good thing, but something I have experienced. -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 4:16 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On 9/7/2013 12:40 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That's right. I´m not joking if i say that the thing that discredited philosophers definitively was relativity, quantum mechanics and their realization: the atomic bomb. That is the event that raised physicalism, a branch of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and discredited any other way of thinking. If by physicalism you mean the meta- of physics, then it's not positivism. Positivism hasn't been considered a good meta-physics since Mach. Too many unobservable things: atoms, photons, quarks, virtual particles,... turned out to make good empirical models. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
with physicalism i mean a form of reductionism that is ideológical instead of metodological, in the sense that despise anything beyond the laws of physics. Physicalists despise chemistry and biology not to mention other disciplines. An scientist can use reductionism in a metodological way, for example, we can use quantum nechanics to better understand some chemical reactions. or we can use brain scanning or cognitive sciences to help in the study of the mind. What is ideológical is to deny or despise anything above your favorite discipline. 2013/9/7 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 9/7/2013 12:40 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That's right. I´m not joking if i say that the thing that discredited philosophers definitively was relativity, quantum mechanics and their realization: the atomic bomb. That is the event that raised physicalism, a branch of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and discredited any other way of thinking. If by physicalism you mean the meta- of physics, then it's not positivism. Positivism hasn't been considered a good meta-physics since Mach. Too many unobservable things: atoms, photons, quarks, virtual particles,... turned out to make good empirical models. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Yeah. Mach was the big physicist and thermodynamicist, Mach's Principle. All I am saying that often in public discourses' I will see physicists, very hard case ones. delve into logical possitivism. They may also enjoy frosted flakes, as well, but the do the LP dance sometimes. But, what of it? It's simply my experience of these chats. I do really like it when philosophers do go deep into the sciences though. It clicks for me. -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 9:51 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? Do they deny the existence of electrons? quarks? as Mach denied atoms. Brent On 9/7/2013 3:52 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Yet, there's lots of scientists in public forums like this, who embrace logical positivism. I am not saying this is a good thing, but something I have experienced. -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 4:16 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On 9/7/2013 12:40 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That's right. I´m not joking if i say that the thing that discredited philosophers definitively was relativity, quantum mechanics and their realization: the atomic bomb. That is the event that raised physicalism, a branch of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and discredited any other way of thinking. If by physicalism you mean the meta- of physics, then it's not positivism. Positivism hasn't been considered a good meta-physics since Mach. Too many unobservable things: atoms, photons, quarks, virtual particles,... turned out to make good empirical models. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.3392 / Virus Database: 3222/6645 - Release Date: 09/07/13 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 6:48 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Yes, your reading Feyerabend, suggests that [...] Speaking of things that give philosophy a bad name consider these words of wisdom from Feyerabend: The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism. No doubt there are those on this list who will try to make excuses for the above moronic statement, but the fact remains that most professional philosophers think any provocative statement can make them stand out no matter how dimwitted it is. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Agreed. This was the same bunch of people that burned Giordono Bruno back a few hundred years ago. They weren't concerned with being faithful to reason, but they were faithful to making sure people viewed them as infaliable. Kept the cash flowing in, as well as supressed disturbing data about the world. But, by extension, should we not condemm Heisenberg for running the nazis, A-bomb program. Here is, perhaps, the most brilliant physicist, of the 20th century (I put Hugh Everett higher) and here he goes working for old adolf. There are plenty of stones to cast, its target rich. Mitch -Original Message- From: John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sun, Sep 8, 2013 12:58 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 6:48 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Yes, your reading Feyerabend, suggests that [...] Speaking of things that give philosophy a bad name consider these words of wisdom from Feyerabend: The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism. No doubt there are those on this list who will try to make excuses for the above moronic statement, but the fact remains that most professional philosophers think any provocative statement can make them stand out no matter how dimwitted it is. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On 07 Sep 2013, at 06:06, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Falsifying was a term invented by a philosopher. I forget his name. Understandable, philosophers are not very memorable. And no philosopher invented falsifiability, some just made a big deal about something rather obvious that had already been in use by scientists for centuries; although way back then they were called Natural Philosophers, a term I wish we still used. Kark Popper! That's it! There is not a scientist alive that learned to do science by reading Karl Popper. Popper was just a reporter, he observed how scientists work and described what he saw. And I don't think Popper was exactly a fount of wisdom. In chapter 37 of his 1976 (1976!!) book Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography Popper says: Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program. Those are Popper's own words not mine, and this is not something to make Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science in general proud. Finally, two years later in 1978 at the age of 76 and 119 years after the publication of The Origin Of Species, perhaps the greatest scientific book ever written, Popper belatedly said: “I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation”. Better late than never I guess, he came to the conclusion that this Darwin whippersnapper might be on to something after all in his 1978 (1978!!) lecture Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind. On free will, I simply say that free will is knowing what you love or hate. In a previous post I said a particular set of likes and dislikes that in the English language is called will. Will is not the problem, it's free will that's gibberish. Free will doesn't seem to mean, in control of events. Free will doesn't seem to mean anything, not one damn thing; but a little thing like not knowing what the hell free will is supposed to be never prevents philosophers passionately arguing if humans have it or not. Apparently the philosophers on this list have decided to first determine if humans have free will or not and only when that question has been entirely settled will they go on and try to figure out what on earth they were talking about. Incompatibilist notion of free-will are inconsistent, but in theory of responsibility, weaker compatibilist notion of free-will exists and are useful, notably to delineate degrees of responsibility in complex human situations. You make the same abuse with the notion of God and with the notion of Free-will. You declare that a notion is nonsensical because you stick on an inconsistent interpretation of it. You keep throwing babies with the bath water. Bruno John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On 08 Sep 2013, at 11:14, Alberto G. Corona wrote: with physicalism i mean a form of reductionism that is ideológical instead of metodological, in the sense that despise anything beyond the laws of physics. Physicalists despise chemistry and biology not to mention other disciplines. Indeed. And that can explain why it is hard for them to even imagine that physics can itself be reduced to another science (like arithmetic/ computer science when assuming computationalism). An scientist can use reductionism in a metodological way, for example, we can use quantum nechanics to better understand some chemical reactions. or we can use brain scanning or cognitive sciences to help in the study of the mind. What is ideológical is to deny or despise anything above your favorite discipline. In this case, it is related to a (not always conscious) dogma, coming from Aristotle metaphysics, and fitting with the natural animal speculation/extrapolation of unicity and existence of itself and its neighborhood. Assuming comp we get the many selves and the many corresponding worlds/realities. The I hides other I's. Bruno 2013/9/7 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 9/7/2013 12:40 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That's right. I´m not joking if i say that the thing that discredited philosophers definitively was relativity, quantum mechanics and their realization: the atomic bomb. That is the event that raised physicalism, a branch of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and discredited any other way of thinking. If by physicalism you mean the meta- of physics, then it's not positivism. Positivism hasn't been considered a good meta-physics since Mach. Too many unobservable things: atoms, photons, quarks, virtual particles,... turned out to make good empirical models. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On 08 Sep 2013, at 00:52, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Yet, there's lots of scientists in public forums like this, who embrace logical positivism. I am not saying this is a good thing, but something I have experienced. Who is logical positivist? I only see people believing in some realities, and explaining or trying to explain the appearances and measure with what is. Postivism is dead. The first positivist condemn the microscope and deny microbes. Positivism tries to evacuate metaphysics by using a very strong metaphysical assumption. It is self-defeating. Bruno -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 4:16 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On 9/7/2013 12:40 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That's right. I´m not joking if i say that the thing that discredited philosophers definitively was relativity, quantum mechanics and their realization: the atomic bomb. That is the event that raised physicalism, a branch of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and discredited any other way of thinking. If by physicalism you mean the meta- of physics, then it's not positivism. Positivism hasn't been considered a good meta-physics since Mach. Too many unobservable things: atoms, photons, quarks, virtual particles,... turned out to make good empirical models. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On 9/8/2013 2:14 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: with physicalism i mean a form of reductionism that is ideológical instead of metodological, in the sense that despise anything beyond the laws of physics. Physicalists despise chemistry and biology not to mention other disciplines. An scientist can use reductionism in a metodological way, for example, we can use quantum nechanics to better understand some chemical reactions. or we can use brain scanning or cognitive sciences to help in the study of the mind. What is ideológical is to deny or despise anything above your favorite discipline. You're just making this stuff up (because you despise physicists?); attributing all petty ideologies to somebody called physicalists without naming and quoting a single one. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: * Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program.* I don't have any problem with Popper's comments here. I see no reason whatsoever for 'Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science' to be concerned in the slightest. Yes I know, fans of Popper are not concerned in the slightest with their hero making that moronic statement, and Popper called himself a philosopher; and that is exactly how philosophy gets a bad name. People misunderstand Popper here. Apparently even Popper misunderstood Popper because, to his credit, he admitted he was wrong about Darwin; most other philosophers would rather eat ground glass than admit they were wrong. It's just a pity that it took this great philosopher of science 119 years after the publication of The Origin Of Species to figure out that Darwin was a scientist. I guess philosophers are just slow learners Furthermore, in regarding natural selection as untestable he followed in the footsteps of many Darwinists. Should a good philosopher be following in somebody's footsteps or should he tell him he's going in the wrong direction? It was quite common to think that the concept of 'survival of the fittest' involved circular reasoning and was therefore tautological. ie. 'fittest' is defined as 'those that survive' and so 'survival of the fittest' amounts to saying 'the survivors survive'. Darwin gave a new meaning to the word, fittest means passing on more genes that endure (survive) to the next generation than somebody who is less fit. And if philosophers see something circular in that then that is yet another reason philosophy has a bad name. Can't see that ever being falsified. Nearly a century ago J.B.S. Haldane was confronted with a bonehead who said he thought Evolution was not a scientific theory because he was unable to provide a hypothetical way it could be disproved. In response Haldane thundered RABBITS IN THE PRECAMBRIAN !. Secondly, I admire Popper for not just accepting Darwinism by rote. For calling things as he saw them, even if he called it wrong. Good for him I believe sincerity is a hugely overrated virtue, I have more respect for somebody insincerely right than sincerely wrong. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Feyerabend made the best analysis of the endavour of Galileo in his fight for the truth. No other presented the intellectual work of Galileo in his gigantic intelectual dimension that was, more even than the case of Einstenin and Feyerabend presented it as no one before. Having studied and put clear all the reasoning steps of Galileo in relation with their Aristotelian opponents and extracted invaluable lessons for the methodology of science I think that Feyerabend deserve some respect , you idiot. Please abstain from insults and disqualifications unless you have enough knowledge of the case and present your arguments. 2013/9/8 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 6:48 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Yes, your reading Feyerabend, suggests that [...] Speaking of things that give philosophy a bad name consider these words of wisdom from Feyerabend: The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism. No doubt there are those on this list who will try to make excuses for the above moronic statement, but the fact remains that most professional philosophers think any provocative statement can make them stand out no matter how dimwitted it is. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Sent from my iPad On 08.09.2013, at 22:28, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program. I don't have any problem with Popper's comments here. I see no reason whatsoever for 'Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science' to be concerned in the slightest. Yes I know, fans of Popper are not concerned in the slightest with their hero making that moronic statement, and Popper called himself a philosopher; and that is exactly how philosophy gets a bad name. People misunderstand Popper here. Apparently even Popper misunderstood Popper because, to his credit, he admitted he was wrong about Darwin; most other philosophers would rather eat ground glass than admit they were wrong. It's just a pity that it took this great philosopher of science 119 years after the publication of The Origin Of Species to figure out that Darwin was a scientist. I guess philosophers are just slow learners Furthermore, in regarding natural selection as untestable he followed in the footsteps of many Darwinists. Should a good philosopher be following in somebody's footsteps or should he tell him he's going in the wrong direction? It was quite common to think that the concept of 'survival of the fittest' involved circular reasoning and was therefore tautological. ie. 'fittest' is defined as 'those that survive' and so 'survival of the fittest' amounts to saying 'the survivors survive'. Darwin gave a new meaning to the word, fittest means passing on more genes that endure (survive) to the next generation than somebody who is less fit. Darwin knew nothing about genes. And if philosophers see something circular in that then that is yet another reason philosophy has a bad name. Can't see that ever being falsified. Nearly a century ago J.B.S. Haldane was confronted with a bonehead who said he thought Evolution was not a scientific theory because he was unable to provide a hypothetical way it could be disproved. In response Haldane thundered RABBITS IN THE PRECAMBRIAN !. Secondly, I admire Popper for not just accepting Darwinism by rote. For calling things as he saw them, even if he called it wrong. Good for him I believe sincerity is a hugely overrated virtue, I have more respect for somebody insincerely right than sincerely wrong. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 12:57 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Mach was the big physicist and thermodynamicist, Mach's Principle. Ernst Mach was a big philosopher but he was more of a medium size physicist. He wrote his most important scientific paper in 1887, but the man lived till 1916 and is far far better remembered as a philosopher than a scientist. He spent nearly 30 years on philosophy and in opposing Quantum Mechanics, Einstein's Theory of Relativity both general and special, and even the atomic theory of matter. He opposed these superb scientific theories for purely philosophical reasons I might add. Yet another reason philosophy has a bad name. The great philosophical discoveries were made by Darwin and Mendel and Watson and Crick and Maxwell and Einstein and Bohr and Heisenberg and Feynman and Godel and Turing. None of these people called themselves philosophers and some even expressed contempt for the subject, but they made the great philosophical discoveries of the age nevertheless. Let me issue a challenge to all on this list: Tell me one thing, just one thing, that people who call themselves philosophers have discovered in the last 2 centuries that is deep, clear, precise, unexpected, and true that scientists had not discovered long before. John K Clark All I am saying that often in public discourses' I will see physicists, very hard case ones. delve into logical possitivism. They may also enjoy frosted flakes, as well, but the do the LP dance sometimes. But, what of it? It's simply my experience of these chats. I do really like it when philosophers do go deep into the sciences though. It clicks for me. -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 9:51 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? Do they deny the existence of electrons? quarks? as Mach denied atoms. Brent On 9/7/2013 3:52 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Yet, there's lots of scientists in public forums like this, who embrace logical positivism. I am not saying this is a good thing, but something I have experienced. -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.comeverything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 4:16 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On 9/7/2013 12:40 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That's right. I´m not joking if i say that the thing that discredited philosophers definitively was relativity, quantum mechanics and their realization: the atomic bomb. That is the event that raised physicalism, a branch of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and discredited any other way of thinking. If by physicalism you mean the meta- of physics, then it's not positivism. Positivism hasn't been considered a good meta-physics since Mach. Too many unobservable things: atoms, photons, quarks, virtual particles,... turned out to make good empirical models. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.3392 / Virus Database: 3222/6645 - Release Date: 09/07/13 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You
RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Hi John Nearly a century ago J.B.S. Haldane was confronted with a bonehead who said he thought Evolution was not a scientific theory because he was unable to provide a hypothetical way it could be disproved. In response Haldane thundered RABBITS IN THE PRECAMBRIAN !. It wasn't evolution that Popper thought was metaphysics, it was natural selection and the reason that he thought it untestable was. ... , actually, why bother? I believe sincerity is a hugely overrated virtue, I have more respect for somebody insincerely right than sincerely wrong. That you have a hard on for insincerity comes across loud and clear, John. You needn't point it out. But, here's a question for you, what about people who are insincere and wrong such as yourself ? Does your love of insincerity outweigh your contempt for error just enough to provide a morsel of self respect? Btw. Did you use to post as Major Higgs Boson, or something, on other boards? The perpetual grumpiness and tortuous attempts to be clever really ring a bell for some reason. Obviously there are many grumpy people in the world so I know its a long shot. Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2013 16:47:32 -0400 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? From: johnkcl...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 12:57 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Mach was the big physicist and thermodynamicist, Mach's Principle. Ernst Mach was a big philosopher but he was more of a medium size physicist. He wrote his most important scientific paper in 1887, but the man lived till 1916 and is far far better remembered as a philosopher than a scientist. He spent nearly 30 years on philosophy and in opposing Quantum Mechanics, Einstein's Theory of Relativity both general and special, and even the atomic theory of matter. He opposed these superb scientific theories for purely philosophical reasons I might add. Yet another reason philosophy has a bad name. The great philosophical discoveries were made by Darwin and Mendel and Watson and Crick and Maxwell and Einstein and Bohr and Heisenberg and Feynman and Godel and Turing. None of these people called themselves philosophers and some even expressed contempt for the subject, but they made the great philosophical discoveries of the age nevertheless. Let me issue a challenge to all on this list: Tell me one thing, just one thing, that people who call themselves philosophers have discovered in the last 2 centuries that is deep, clear, precise, unexpected, and true that scientists had not discovered long before. John K Clark All I am saying that often in public discourses' I will see physicists, very hard case ones. delve into logical possitivism. They may also enjoy frosted flakes, as well, but the do the LP dance sometimes. But, what of it? It's simply my experience of these chats. I do really like it when philosophers do go deep into the sciences though. It clicks for me. -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 9:51 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? Do they deny the existence of electrons? quarks? as Mach denied atoms. Brent On 9/7/2013 3:52 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Yet, there's lots of scientists in public forums like this, who embrace logical positivism. I am not saying this is a good thing, but something I have experienced. -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 4:16 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On 9/7/2013 12:40 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That's right. I´m not joking if i say that the thing that discredited philosophers definitively was relativity, quantum mechanics and their realization: the atomic bomb. That is the event that raised physicalism, a branch of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and discredited any other way of thinking. If by physicalism you mean the meta- of physics, then it's not positivism. Positivism hasn't been considered a good meta-physics since Mach. Too many unobservable things: atoms, photons, quarks, virtual particles,... turned out to make good empirical models. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Sunday, September 8, 2013 4:42:02 PM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Sent from my iPad On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 chris peck chris_...@hotmail.com javascript:wrote: * Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program.* I don't have any problem with Popper's comments here. I see no reason whatsoever for 'Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science' to be concerned in the slightest. On 08.09.2013, at 22:28, John Clark johnk...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: Yes I know, fans of Popper are not concerned in the slightest with their hero making that moronic statement, and Popper called himself a philosopher; and that is exactly how philosophy gets a bad name. People misunderstand Popper here. Apparently even Popper misunderstood Popper because, to his credit, he admitted he was wrong about Darwin; most other philosophers would rather eat ground glass than admit they were wrong. It's just a pity that it took this great philosopher of science 119 years after the publication of The Origin Of Species to figure out that Darwin was a scientist. I guess philosophers are just slow learners Furthermore, in regarding natural selection as untestable he followed in the footsteps of many Darwinists. Should a good philosopher be following in somebody's footsteps or should he tell him he's going in the wrong direction? It was quite common to think that the concept of 'survival of the fittest' involved circular reasoning and was therefore tautological. ie. 'fittest' is defined as 'those that survive' and so 'survival of the fittest' amounts to saying 'the survivors survive'. Darwin gave a new meaning to the word, fittest means passing on more genes that endure (survive) to the next generation than somebody who is less fit. Darwin knew nothing about genes. Yes, and evolutionary fitness has nothing do with the quantity of winning genes - this is a Eugenicist misinterpretation of evolution. Fitness is about the circumstantial appropriateness of mutations, not about hereditary supremacy. A sudden climate change makes entire classes of 'more fit' genes 'less fit' over night. Evolution is not a race or striving for success through superior engineering - that is utter horseshit. Thanks, Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 1:04 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: by extension, should we not condemm Heisenberg for running the nazis, A-bomb program. The fact that Heisenberg ran the Nazi A-bomb program indicates that he was no expert in the field of ethics, but it in no way diminishes his claim for being an expert in the field he is most famous for, physics. But philosophy is the field that both Feyerabend and Popper are supposed to be experts in, which makes there philosophical brain farts about Galileo and Darwin unforgivable. Incidentally it is beyond dispute that Heisenberg ran the Nazi A-bomb program very very poorly, some say this was just because of incompetence but others say it was deliberate sabotage, if so then Heisenberg knew something about ethics after all. And I'm still waiting for somebody to tell me one thing that philosophers have discovered in the last 2 centuries that is deep clear precise unexpected and true that scientists or mathematicians had not discovered first. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 10:10 PM, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.comwrote: Did you use to post as Major Higgs Boson, or something, on other boards? Nice name but no. I have made thousands of posts over the years and they have all been under my real name because I am not ashamed of them. Well OK, one time and just one time for reasons I need not go into now I did post under the name Dr. Livingston I Presume. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Hi John I have made thousands of posts over the years and they have all been under my real name because I am not ashamed of them. Perhaps shame went the same way as sincerity, then? ... just kidding. What an amazing record you have there, John. You must be very proud. We should all learn from the fine example you set. All the best. Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2013 00:18:56 -0400 Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? From: johnkcl...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 10:10 PM, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: Did you use to post as Major Higgs Boson, or something, on other boards? Nice name but no. I have made thousands of posts over the years and they have all been under my real name because I am not ashamed of them. Well OK, one time and just one time for reasons I need not go into now I did post under the name Dr. Livingston I Presume. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
That's right. I´m not joking if i say that the thing that discredited philosophers definitively was relativity, quantum mechanics and their realization: the atomic bomb. That is the event that raised physicalism, a branch of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and discredited any other way of thinking. That was so strong that that way of thinking became THE reality. Like the fish presupposes the water. People, not even scientist know that they are ferocious logical positivists. Since then, biologism and computationalism, two other branches of positivism have been of fashion since the cloning of Dolly and the popularization of computers. Before that, philosophy, or the philosophical debate, like before religion was on the top. People killed one another in the name of philosophical concepts. All the ideologies of the XX century invoked prominent philosophers. That is not only fashion. IMHO this is religion. As Voegelin said, what is in common in all these movements, branches and ideologies, from physicalism to biologism to computationalism to comunism to nazism to ecologism etc is the notion of utopy, that is the common ground of modernity. All of them propose a end of history and a perfect state of things, or at least a straigh path to eternal improvement trough knowledge and investment in the particular things that they are promoting, while despise any other kind of effort. The paradise is just tomorrow (if you follow me). You only have to take a look at Scientific American or any other publication of this kind. Behind these ideas they are the inmortal desires and hopes of religion, and , more concrete, a kind of gnostic christianism. 2013/9/7 spudboy...@aol.com I don't agree that philosophers do have a bad name, save that they don't employ falsifiability. Falsifying was a term invented by a philosopher. I forget his name. Kark Popper! That's it! Also, many scientists by nature are logical positivists, even though this is a philosophical concept from the 19th century. On free will, I simply say that free will is knowing what you love or hate. An example would be asking a person carried off and bounced along the ground by a tornado, How do you like it so far? And the victim could reply, Ah! I could do better without it. the victim would be correct of course, but that is free will-having an opinion of yourself. Free will doesn't seem to mean, in control of events. -Original Message- From: Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.**comeverything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Fri, Sep 6, 2013 5:39 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? I don't think that having different concepts or perspectives means that people don't know what they are talking about. Free will is a concept which is so fundamental that it is literally necessary to have free will before you can ask the question of what it is. I think that it is the claim that we don't know or can't know what words like free will and consciousness refer to which are more of a distraction. In the days before computers, physicists and mathematicians spent decades poring over there slide rules and logarithm tables. Some made new discoveries, but most did not. I don't see any difference with philosophical debate. Not everyone wants to be limited to thinking about things which can be detected by inanimate objects. I wouldn't waste my time focusing so narrowly on that aspect of the universe, but I wouldn't begrudge someone else that right. Why should it bother me if people argue about esoteric terms or count blips from a particle accelerator? On Friday, September 6, 2013 2:34:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:This is what gives philosophers a bad name! In just one day people have sent the following philosophical gems to the list, enough hot air to signifacantly contribute to global warming, * I also do not “KNOW” whether or not I really do have “free will”. But if I do [blah blah] * How do you explain the experience of “free will” then? * The experience of free will is not a snap shot, instead it [blah blah] * If free will exists (and also of course that we have it) then [blah blah] * If instead free will does not in fact exist, then [blah blah] * consciousness necessarily must exist in the first place in order for free will to exist. * Are you maintain that the experience of free will does not itself exist? * Can you conceive of “free will” without introducing a subject in which it arises and is experienced? And so it goes, on and on arguing about if free will exists or not, but never once does anybody stop to ask what the hell free will means before giving their opinion about it's existence. People argue passionately but they don't know what they're talking about, by that I don't mean that what they are saying is wrong, I mean that they quite literally DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT. When he was a student
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
What drives this change? the same drive than in the ancient times: If A people defeat B people, then B people agree that A gods is stronger that B gods. The atomic bomb, the cloning, the magic of the computers are, in the mind of the stone-age brain of the humans, manifestations of the gods of modernity, and their priests are prominent political and scientific figures. If the moors had defeated the French in Poitiers, well all would believe in Allah. 2013/9/7 Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com That's right. I´m not joking if i say that the thing that discredited philosophers definitively was relativity, quantum mechanics and their realization: the atomic bomb. That is the event that raised physicalism, a branch of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and discredited any other way of thinking. That was so strong that that way of thinking became THE reality. Like the fish presupposes the water. People, not even scientist know that they are ferocious logical positivists. Since then, biologism and computationalism, two other branches of positivism have been of fashion since the cloning of Dolly and the popularization of computers. Before that, philosophy, or the philosophical debate, like before religion was on the top. People killed one another in the name of philosophical concepts. All the ideologies of the XX century invoked prominent philosophers. That is not only fashion. IMHO this is religion. As Voegelin said, what is in common in all these movements, branches and ideologies, from physicalism to biologism to computationalism to comunism to nazism to ecologism etc is the notion of utopy, that is the common ground of modernity. All of them propose a end of history and a perfect state of things, or at least a straigh path to eternal improvement trough knowledge and investment in the particular things that they are promoting, while despise any other kind of effort. The paradise is just tomorrow (if you follow me). You only have to take a look at Scientific American or any other publication of this kind. Behind these ideas they are the inmortal desires and hopes of religion, and , more concrete, a kind of gnostic christianism. 2013/9/7 spudboy...@aol.com I don't agree that philosophers do have a bad name, save that they don't employ falsifiability. Falsifying was a term invented by a philosopher. I forget his name. Kark Popper! That's it! Also, many scientists by nature are logical positivists, even though this is a philosophical concept from the 19th century. On free will, I simply say that free will is knowing what you love or hate. An example would be asking a person carried off and bounced along the ground by a tornado, How do you like it so far? And the victim could reply, Ah! I could do better without it. the victim would be correct of course, but that is free will-having an opinion of yourself. Free will doesn't seem to mean, in control of events. -Original Message- From: Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.**comeverything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Fri, Sep 6, 2013 5:39 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? I don't think that having different concepts or perspectives means that people don't know what they are talking about. Free will is a concept which is so fundamental that it is literally necessary to have free will before you can ask the question of what it is. I think that it is the claim that we don't know or can't know what words like free will and consciousness refer to which are more of a distraction. In the days before computers, physicists and mathematicians spent decades poring over there slide rules and logarithm tables. Some made new discoveries, but most did not. I don't see any difference with philosophical debate. Not everyone wants to be limited to thinking about things which can be detected by inanimate objects. I wouldn't waste my time focusing so narrowly on that aspect of the universe, but I wouldn't begrudge someone else that right. Why should it bother me if people argue about esoteric terms or count blips from a particle accelerator? On Friday, September 6, 2013 2:34:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:This is what gives philosophers a bad name! In just one day people have sent the following philosophical gems to the list, enough hot air to signifacantly contribute to global warming, * I also do not “KNOW” whether or not I really do have “free will”. But if I do [blah blah] * How do you explain the experience of “free will” then? * The experience of free will is not a snap shot, instead it [blah blah] * If free will exists (and also of course that we have it) then [blah blah] * If instead free will does not in fact exist, then [blah blah] * consciousness necessarily must exist in the first place in order for free will to exist. * Are you maintain that the experience of free will does not itself exist
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Popper deserves street cred, for being a good observer, I will say. Also, consider that physicists who write for non-physicists, tend to know Popper, well enough to use hos name or quote him. I was thinking that John Baez, did use Popper's name, a time or two, when defending his conformist views of physics (Though I bet he'd call himself a no-shit guy), I'd just chuck him (for my own nefarious, purposes, in the A-hole pile). Most often, physicists, don't have to be nasty (tho' they feel they do!!!), and that's what makes ballgames, as we say in the States. There are philosopher guys, like the Austrian, Rudiger Vaas, and Canadian philosopher, John Leslie, who studied physics, and wanted their knowledge to inform their philosophy. I think they succeeded. Then there is the Austrian experimentalist, Anton Zeilinger, who a year ago was looking for a philosopher, to better. explain, the results of his experients to the world, and perhaps, other, scientists? I don't know if he's got a book, coming forth of not? Explaining, what you do, and what it means are two different things (agreed?) and explaining theory and experiementation to the unwashed public seems infuriating to many bench scientists. An example of this is the quantum. Nobody gets more pissed off (not pissed-drunk in the English verbage) as physicists, explaining why, for example, quantum computation is impossible unless we invoke very cold temperatures. I say to myself: Wait! This can't be right. Because the quantum is usually comprised of the actions of photons and electrons, and they are subatomic, which by definition is quantum. Sticks, bird poop, rocks, have the flow of electrons, right? So, thus quantum computing must be happening. No! idiot! Then, in forums such as this they sulk away, probably feeling sullied by the experience of dealing with ignorant riff-raff, such as me. What I didn't understand and didn't discover till this year, is the difference between quantum computation, and quantum effects. Ah! Ok! From my experiences, philosophers make decent observers, and try to take human meaning out from the science. Many scientists would say, if they are Not looking for grants, is that: There is no meaning, you idiot!. Which, sadly, sometimes, seems the truth. Yet, I would hope that occasionally, perhaps foolishly, we, the unwashed, can derrive some meaning from the grand pursuit. Mitch -Original Message- From: John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 12:06 am Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Falsifying was a term invented by a philosopher. I forget his name. Understandable, philosophers are not very memorable. And no philosopher invented falsifiability, some just made a big deal about something rather obvious that had already been in use by scientists for centuries; although way back then they were called Natural Philosophers, a term I wish we still used. Kark Popper! That's it! There is not a scientist alive that learned to do science by reading Karl Popper. Popper was just a reporter, he observed how scientists work and described what he saw. And I don't think Popper was exactly a fount of wisdom. In chapter 37 of his 1976 (1976!!) book Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography Popper says: Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program. Those are Popper's own words not mine, and this is not something to make Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science in general proud. Finally, two years later in 1978 at the age of 76 and 119 years after the publication of The Origin Of Species, perhaps the greatest scientific book ever written, Popper belatedly said: “I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation”. Better late than never I guess, he came to the conclusion that this Darwin whippersnapper might be on to something after all in his 1978 (1978!!) lecture Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind. On free will, I simply say that free will is knowing what you love or hate. In a previous post I said a particular set of likes and dislikes that in the English language is called will. Will is not the problem, it's free will that's gibberish. Free will doesn't seem to mean, in control of events. Free will doesn't seem to mean anything, not one damn thing; but a little thing like not knowing what the hell free will is supposed to be never prevents philosophers passionately arguing if humans have it or not. Apparently the philosophers on this list have decided to first determine if humans have free will or not and only when that question has been entirely settled will they go on and try to figure out what on earth they were talking about. John K Clark
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
But falsability is not a complete criterion for a scientific theory. It is not a demarcation that separate science from not science and forces an artificial reductionism. First, the experimentation can not be done ever in every science. Not only cosmology and meteorology but also in human sciences it is almost impossible to perform a controlled experiments. Some economy laws, not to tell in other old discipliones like moral sciences and so on, many laws have a time span for verification that may range from years to generations, and apply to a great number of individuals. Others, like in the case of philosophy, study the world of the mind, not the phenomena. Logical positivist would say , and in fact say, that they are not sciences. The result is the unlearning of the empirical laws learned trough this greatest experiment of all, that is life across generations. This vital knowledge configure the common sense, bot innately in the form of instinctive intuitions as well as culturally, in the form of learned traditions, sometimes a mix of the two. Positivism and its last incarnation falsacionism presupposes an unlearning of anything still not tested. The consecuences are disastrous policies and ruined individual lifes. It is no surprise that this narrow criteria of truth is a sure path for social engineering and totalitarianism. In the other side, as Feyerabend said, there is no such thing as pure experimental data. To gather data you need a theory in the first place. there are no data devoid of any preconceived theory. That is not a marxist, nor relativist interpretantion of science but something simple to understand. That is easily verifiable if you think that to construct a method of measure, you often must make use of the very theory that you have to test. Galileo had the experimental data against him, because, nobody detected that earth was moving. He had to reinterpret the experimental data, in complicated ways to make it credible, while the geocentrism was locally a simpler theory of the terrestrial facts, the ones for which me most abundant data were available. 2013/9/7 spudboy...@aol.com Popper deserves street cred, for being a good observer, I will say. Also, consider that physicists who write for non-physicists, tend to know Popper, well enough to use hos name or quote him. I was thinking that John Baez, did use Popper's name, a time or two, when defending his conformist views of physics (Though I bet he'd call himself a no-shit guy), I'd just chuck him (for my own nefarious, purposes, in the A-hole pile). Most often, physicists, don't have to be nasty (tho' they feel they do!!!), and that's what makes ballgames, as we say in the States. There are philosopher guys, like the Austrian, Rudiger Vaas, and Canadian philosopher, John Leslie, who studied physics, and wanted their knowledge to inform their philosophy. I think they succeeded. Then there is the Austrian experimentalist, Anton Zeilinger, who a year ago was looking for a philosopher, to better. explain, the results of his experients to the world, and perhaps, other, scientists? I don't know if he's got a book, coming forth of not? Explaining, what you do, and what it means are two different things (agreed?) and explaining theory and experiementation to the unwashed public seems infuriating to many bench scientists. An example of this is the quantum. Nobody gets more pissed off (not pissed-drunk in the English verbage) as physicists, explaining why, for example, quantum computation is impossible unless we invoke very cold temperatures. I say to myself: Wait! This can't be right. Because the quantum is usually comprised of the actions of photons and electrons, and they are subatomic, which by definition is quantum. Sticks, bird poop, rocks, have the flow of electrons, right? So, thus quantum computing must be happening. No! idiot! Then, in forums such as this they sulk away, probably feeling sullied by the experience of dealing with ignorant riff-raff, such as me. What I didn't understand and didn't discover till this year, is the difference between quantum computation, and quantum effects. Ah! Ok! From my experiences, philosophers make decent observers, and try to take human meaning out from the science. Many scientists would say, if they are Not looking for grants, is that: There is no meaning, you idiot!. Which, sadly, sometimes, seems the truth. Yet, I would hope that occasionally, perhaps foolishly, we, the unwashed, can derrive some meaning from the grand pursuit. Mitch -Original Message- From: John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 12:06 am Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Falsifying was a term invented by a philosopher. I forget his name. Understandable, philosophers are not very memorable. And no philosopher invented falsifiability
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Free will doesn't seem to mean, in control of events. Free will doesn't seem to mean anything, not one damn thing; Free will means that your own will is relatively unopposed. When nothing is overtly coercing you 'against your will', then you are free to exercise your own will as you wish. In your imagination, your are relatively free to conjure up may more dreams and actions than you can ever actualize publicly. Your will is therefore more free within yourself than beyond the confines of your body. Free will doesn't have to be absolutely free, it just refers to whatever degree of freedom we are used to. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Hi Alberto First, the experimentation can not be done ever in every science. Not only cosmology and meteorology but also in human sciences it is almost impossible to perform a controlled experiments. Some economy laws, not to tell in other old discipliones like moral sciences and so on, many laws have a time span for verification that may range from years to generations, and apply to a great number of individuals. Others, like in the case of philosophy, study the world of the mind, not the phenomena. Logical positivist would say , and in fact say, that they are not sciences. The result is the unlearning of the empirical laws learned trough this greatest experiment of all, that is life across generations. This vital knowledge configure the common sense, bot innately in the form of instinctive intuitions as well as culturally, in the form of learned traditions, sometimes a mix of the two. Positivism and its last incarnation falsacionism presupposes an unlearning of anything still not tested. The consecuences are disastrous policies and ruined individual lifes. It is no surprise that this narrow criteria of truth is a sure path for social engineering and totalitarianism. In the other side, as Feyerabend said, there is no such thing as pure experimental data. To gather data you need a theory in the first place. there are no data devoid of any preconceived theory. That is not a marxist, nor relativist interpretantion of science but something simple to understand. That is easily verifiable if you think that to construct a method of measure, you often must make use of the very theory that you have to test. Galileo had the experimental data against him, because, nobody detected that earth was moving. He had to reinterpret the experimental data, in complicated ways to make it credible, while the geocentrism was locally a simpler theory of the terrestrial facts, the ones for which me most abundant data were available. Very nicely put. I agree that what was pernicious about Popper was the attempt to demarcate between what was and was not science and to recommend the imposition of a single method upon the whole endeavour. All the best. Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2013 07:09:54 -0700 From: whatsons...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? Free will doesn't seem to mean, in control of events. Free will doesn't seem to mean anything, not one damn thing; Free will means that your own will is relatively unopposed. When nothing is overtly coercing you 'against your will', then you are free to exercise your own will as you wish. In your imagination, your are relatively free to conjure up may more dreams and actions than you can ever actualize publicly. Your will is therefore more free within yourself than beyond the confines of your body. Free will doesn't have to be absolutely free, it just refers to whatever degree of freedom we are used to. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On 9/7/2013 12:40 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That's right. I´m not joking if i say that the thing that discredited philosophers definitively was relativity, quantum mechanics and their realization: the atomic bomb. That is the event that raised physicalism, a branch of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and discredited any other way of thinking. If by physicalism you mean the meta- of physics, then it's not positivism. Positivism hasn't been considered a good meta-physics since Mach. Too many unobservable things: atoms, photons, quarks, virtual particles,... turned out to make good empirical models. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Yes, your reading Feyerabend, suggests that the philosopher unintentionally echos Heisenberg and the uncertainty principle, Schrodinger, and such. I think that philosophers can help with the process of learning or teaching physical principles, leaving the bench scientists., free to pursue science. In the other side, as Feyerabend said, there is no such thing as pure experimental data. To gather data you need a theory in the first place. there are no data devoid of any preconceived theory. That is not a marxist, nor relativist interpretantion of science but something simple to understand. That is easily verifiable if you think that to construct a method of measure, you often must make use of the very theory that you have to test. Galileo had the experimental data against him, because, nobody detected that earth was moving. -Original Message- From: Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 9:58 am Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? But falsability is not a complete criterion for a scientific theory. It is not a demarcation that separate science from not science and forces an artificial reductionism. First, the experimentation can not be done ever in every science. Not only cosmology and meteorology but also in human sciences it is almost impossible to perform a controlled experiments. Some economy laws, not to tell in other old discipliones like moral sciences and so on, many laws have a time span for verification that may range from years to generations, and apply to a great number of individuals. Others, like in the case of philosophy, study the world of the mind, not the phenomena. Logical positivist would say , and in fact say, that they are not sciences. The result is the unlearning of the empirical laws learned trough this greatest experiment of all, that is life across generations. This vital knowledge configure the common sense, bot innately in the form of instinctive intuitions as well as culturally, in the form of learned traditions, sometimes a mix of the two. Positivism and its last incarnation falsacionism presupposes an unlearning of anything still not tested. The consecuences are disastrous policies and ruined individual lifes. It is no surprise that this narrow criteria of truth is a sure path for social engineering and totalitarianism. In the other side, as Feyerabend said, there is no such thing as pure experimental data. To gather data you need a theory in the first place. there are no data devoid of any preconceived theory. That is not a marxist, nor relativist interpretantion of science but something simple to understand. That is easily verifiable if you think that to construct a method of measure, you often must make use of the very theory that you have to test. Galileo had the experimental data against him, because, nobody detected that earth was moving. He had to reinterpret the experimental data, in complicated ways to make it credible, while the geocentrism was locally a simpler theory of the terrestrial facts, the ones for which me most abundant data were available. 2013/9/7 spudboy...@aol.com Popper deserves street cred, for being a good observer, I will say. Also, consider that physicists who write for non-physicists, tend to know Popper, well enough to use hos name or quote him. I was thinking that John Baez, did use Popper's name, a time or two, when defending his conformist views of physics (Though I bet he'd call himself a no-shit guy), I'd just chuck him (for my own nefarious, purposes, in the A-hole pile). Most often, physicists, don't have to be nasty (tho' they feel they do!!!), and that's what makes ballgames, as we say in the States. There are philosopher guys, like the Austrian, Rudiger Vaas, and Canadian philosopher, John Leslie, who studied physics, and wanted their knowledge to inform their philosophy. I think they succeeded. Then there is the Austrian experimentalist, Anton Zeilinger, who a year ago was looking for a philosopher, to better. explain, the results of his experients to the world, and perhaps, other, scientists? I don't know if he's got a book, coming forth of not? Explaining, what you do, and what it means are two different things (agreed?) and explaining theory and experiementation to the unwashed public seems infuriating to many bench scientists. An example of this is the quantum. Nobody gets more pissed off (not pissed-drunk in the English verbage) as physicists, explaining why, for example, quantum computation is impossible unless we invoke very cold temperatures. I say to myself: Wait! This can't be right. Because the quantum is usually comprised of the actions of photons and electrons, and they are subatomic, which by definition is quantum. Sticks, bird poop, rocks, have the flow of electrons, right? So, thus quantum computing must be happening. No! idiot! Then, in forums
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Yet, there's lots of scientists in public forums like this, who embrace logical positivism. I am not saying this is a good thing, but something I have experienced. -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 4:16 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On 9/7/2013 12:40 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That's right. I´m not joking if i say that the thing that discredited philosophers definitively was relativity, quantum mechanics and their realization: the atomic bomb. That is the event that raised physicalism, a branch of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and discredited any other way of thinking. If by physicalism you mean the meta- of physics, then it's not positivism. Positivism hasn't been considered a good meta-physics since Mach. Too many unobservable things: atoms, photons, quarks, virtual particles,... turned out to make good empirical models. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Spudboy, Feyerabend did not use the Heisenberg principle. It says something more simple but more fundamental, and because is more fundamental is difficult to grasp: The facts or the experimental data are interpreted by some theory that has been assumed previously. Sometimes this theory is the same than the one supposed to test with the data. The Example that Feyerabend uses is the dispute between Galileo and the aristotelians about if the heart is moving or not. According with the implicit aristotelian, and common sense theory , a stone falls vertically a distance of a few meters to the ground. According with Galileo, the stone moves at high speed a few kilometers with the movement of the heart around the sun until it impact the ground. So even in the measure of distances, one must use a theory, From the wikipedia: Feyerabend was critical of any guideline that aimed to judge the quality of scientific theories by comparing them to known facts. He thought that previous theory might influence natural interpretations of observed phenomena. Scientists necessarily make implicit assumptions when comparing scientific theories to facts that they observe. Such assumptions need to be changed in order to make the new theory compatible with observations. The main example of the influence of natural interpretations that Feyerabend provided was the *tower argument*. The tower argument was one of the main objections against the theory of a moving earth. Aristotelians assumed that the fact that a stone which is dropped from a tower lands directly beneath it shows that the earth is stationary. They thought that, if the earth moved while the stone was falling, the stone would have been left behind. Objects would fall diagonally instead of vertically. Since this does not happen, Aristotelians thought that it was evident that the earth did not move. If one uses ancient theories of impulse and relative motion, the Copernican theory indeed appears to be falsified by the fact that objects fall vertically on earth. This observation required a new interpretation to make it compatible with Copernican theory. Galileo was able to make such a change about the nature of impulse and relative motion. Before such theories were articulated, Galileo had to make use of ad hoc methods and proceed counterinductively. So, ad hoc hypotheses actually have a positive function: they temporarily make a new theory compatible with facts until the theory to be defended can be supported by other theories. 2013/9/8 spudboy...@aol.com Yes, your reading Feyerabend, suggests that the philosopher unintentionally echos Heisenberg and the uncertainty principle, Schrodinger, and such. I think that philosophers can help with the process of learning or teaching physical principles, leaving the bench scientists., free to pursue science. In the other side, as Feyerabend said, there is no such thing as pure experimental data. To gather data you need a theory in the first place. there are no data devoid of any preconceived theory. That is not a marxist, nor relativist interpretantion of science but something simple to understand. That is easily verifiable if you think that to construct a method of measure, you often must make use of the very theory that you have to test. Galileo had the experimental data against him, because, nobody detected that earth was moving. -Original Message- From: Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 9:58 am Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? But falsability is not a complete criterion for a scientific theory. It is not a demarcation that separate science from not science and forces an artificial reductionism. First, the experimentation can not be done ever in every science. Not only cosmology and meteorology but also in human sciences it is almost impossible to perform a controlled experiments. Some economy laws, not to tell in other old discipliones like moral sciences and so on, many laws have a time span for verification that may range from years to generations, and apply to a great number of individuals. Others, like in the case of philosophy, study the world of the mind, not the phenomena. Logical positivist would say , and in fact say, that they are not sciences. The result is the unlearning of the empirical laws learned trough this greatest experiment of all, that is life across generations. This vital knowledge configure the common sense, bot innately in the form of instinctive intuitions as well as culturally, in the form of learned traditions, sometimes a mix of the two. Positivism and its last incarnation falsacionism presupposes an unlearning of anything still not tested. The consecuences are disastrous policies and ruined individual lifes. It is no surprise that this narrow criteria of truth is a sure path for social engineering and totalitarianism. In the other side
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
Do they deny the existence of electrons? quarks? as Mach denied atoms. Brent On 9/7/2013 3:52 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Yet, there's lots of scientists in public forums like this, who embrace logical positivism. I am not saying this is a good thing, but something I have experienced. -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Sep 7, 2013 4:16 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? On 9/7/2013 12:40 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That's right. I´m not joking if i say that the thing that discredited philosophers definitively was relativity, quantum mechanics and their realization: the atomic bomb. That is the event that raised physicalism, a branch of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and discredited any other way of thinking. If by physicalism you mean the meta- of physics, then it's not positivism. Positivism hasn't been considered a good meta-physics since Mach. Too many unobservable things: atoms, photons, quarks, virtual particles,... turned out to make good empirical models. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com http://www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.3392 / Virus Database: 3222/6645 - Release Date: 09/07/13 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
I don't think that having different concepts or perspectives means that people don't know what they are talking about. Free will is a concept which is so fundamental that it is literally necessary to have free will before you can ask the question of what it is. I think that it is the claim that we don't know or can't know what words like free will and consciousness refer to which are more of a distraction. In the days before computers, physicists and mathematicians spent decades poring over there slide rules and logarithm tables. Some made new discoveries, but most did not. I don't see any difference with philosophical debate. Not everyone wants to be limited to thinking about things which can be detected by inanimate objects. I wouldn't waste my time focusing so narrowly on that aspect of the universe, but I wouldn't begrudge someone else that right. Why should it bother me if people argue about esoteric terms or count blips from a particle accelerator? On Friday, September 6, 2013 2:34:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: This is what gives philosophers a bad name! In just one day people have sent the following philosophical gems to the list, enough hot air to signifacantly contribute to global warming, * I also do not “KNOW” whether or not I really do have “free will”. But if I do [blah blah] * How do you explain the experience of “free will” then? * The experience of free will is not a snap shot, instead it [blah blah] * If free will exists (and also of course that we have it) then [blah blah] * If instead free will does not in fact exist, then [blah blah] * consciousness necessarily must exist in the first place in order for free will to exist. * Are you maintain that the experience of free will does not itself exist? * Can you conceive of “free will” without introducing a subject in which it arises and is experienced? And so it goes, on and on arguing about if free will exists or not, but never once does anybody stop to ask what the hell free will means before giving their opinion about it's existence. People argue passionately but they don't know what they're talking about, by that I don't mean that what they are saying is wrong, I mean that they quite literally DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT. When he was a student at Princeton Richard Feynman had an encounter with philosophers, years later this is what he had to say about it and why he developed a contempt not for philosophy but for philosophers. I gave this quotation before but apparently it needs repeating: In the Graduate College dining room at Princeton everybody used to sit with his own group. I sat with the physicists, but after a bit I thought: It would be nice to see what the rest of the world is doing, so I'll sit for a week or two in each of the other groups. When I sat with the philosophers I listened to them discuss very seriously a book called Process and Reality by Whitehead. They were using words in a funny way, and I couldn't quite understand what they were saying. Now I didn't want to interrupt them in their own conversation and keep asking them to explain something, and on the few occasions that I did, they'd try to explain it to me, but I still didn't get it. Finally they invited me to come to their seminar. They had a seminar that was like, a class. It had been meeting once a week to discuss a new chapter out of Process and Reality - some guy would give a report on it and then there would be a discussion. I went to this seminar promising myself to keep my mouth shut, reminding myself that I didn't know anything about the subject, and I was going there just to watch. What happened there was typical - so typical that it was unbelievable, but true. First of all, I sat there without saying anything, which is almost unbelievable, but also true. A student gave a report on the chapter to be studied that week. In it Whitehead kept using the words essential object in a particular technical way that presumably he had defined, but that I didn't understand. After some discussion as to what essential object meant, the professor leading the seminar said something meant to clarify things and drew something that looked like lightning bolts on the blackboard. Mr. Feynman, he said, would you say an electron is an 'essential object'? Well, now I was in trouble. I admitted that I hadn't read the book, so I had no idea of what Whitehead meant by the phrase; I had only come to watch. But, I said, I'll try to answer the professor's question if you will first answer a question from me, so I can have a better idea of what 'essential object' means. What I had intended to do was to find out whether they thought theoretical constructs were essential objects. The electron is a theory that we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real. I wanted to make the idea of a theory
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
I don't agree that philosophers do have a bad name, save that they don't employ falsifiability. Falsifying was a term invented by a philosopher. I forget his name. Kark Popper! That's it! Also, many scientists by nature are logical positivists, even though this is a philosophical concept from the 19th century. On free will, I simply say that free will is knowing what you love or hate. An example would be asking a person carried off and bounced along the ground by a tornado, How do you like it so far? And the victim could reply, Ah! I could do better without it. the victim would be correct of course, but that is free will-having an opinion of yourself. Free will doesn't seem to mean, in control of events. -Original Message- From: Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Fri, Sep 6, 2013 5:39 pm Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? I don't think that having different concepts or perspectives means that people don't know what they are talking about. Free will is a concept which is so fundamental that it is literally necessary to have free will before you can ask the question of what it is. I think that it is the claim that we don't know or can't know what words like free will and consciousness refer to which are more of a distraction. In the days before computers, physicists and mathematicians spent decades poring over there slide rules and logarithm tables. Some made new discoveries, but most did not. I don't see any difference with philosophical debate. Not everyone wants to be limited to thinking about things which can be detected by inanimate objects. I wouldn't waste my time focusing so narrowly on that aspect of the universe, but I wouldn't begrudge someone else that right. Why should it bother me if people argue about esoteric terms or count blips from a particle accelerator? On Friday, September 6, 2013 2:34:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:This is what gives philosophers a bad name! In just one day people have sent the following philosophical gems to the list, enough hot air to signifacantly contribute to global warming, * I also do not “KNOW” whether or not I really do have “free will”. But if I do [blah blah] * How do you explain the experience of “free will” then? * The experience of free will is not a snap shot, instead it [blah blah] * If free will exists (and also of course that we have it) then [blah blah] * If instead free will does not in fact exist, then [blah blah] * consciousness necessarily must exist in the first place in order for free will to exist. * Are you maintain that the experience of free will does not itself exist? * Can you conceive of “free will” without introducing a subject in which it arises and is experienced? And so it goes, on and on arguing about if free will exists or not, but never once does anybody stop to ask what the hell free will means before giving their opinion about it's existence. People argue passionately but they don't know what they're talking about, by that I don't mean that what they are saying is wrong, I mean that they quite literally DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT. When he was a student at Princeton Richard Feynman had an encounter with philosophers, years later this is what he had to say about it and why he developed a contempt not for philosophy but for philosophers. I gave this quotation before but apparently it needs repeating: In the Graduate College dining room at Princeton everybody used to sit with his own group. I sat with the physicists, but after a bit I thought: It would be nice to see what the rest of the world is doing, so I'll sit for a week or two in each of the other groups. When I sat with the philosophers I listened to them discuss very seriously a book called Process and Reality by Whitehead. They were using words in a funny way, and I couldn't quite understand what they were saying. Now I didn't want to interrupt them in their own conversation and keep asking them to explain something, and on the few occasions that I did, they'd try to explain it to me, but I still didn't get it. Finally they invited me to come to their seminar. They had a seminar that was like, a class. It had been meeting once a week to discuss a new chapter out of Process and Reality - some guy would give a report on it and then there would be a discussion. I went to this seminar promising myself to keep my mouth shut, reminding myself that I didn't know anything about the subject, and I was going there just to watch. What happened there was typical - so typical that it was unbelievable, but true. First of all, I sat there without saying anything, which is almost unbelievable, but also true. A student gave a report on the chapter to be studied that week. In it Whitehead kept using the words essential object in a particular technical way that presumably he had defined, but that I didn't
Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 spudboy...@aol.com wrote: Falsifying was a term invented by a philosopher. I forget his name. Understandable, philosophers are not very memorable. And no philosopher invented falsifiability, some just made a big deal about something rather obvious that had already been in use by scientists for centuries; although way back then they were called Natural Philosophers, a term I wish we still used. Kark Popper! That's it! There is not a scientist alive that learned to do science by reading Karl Popper. Popper was just a reporter, he observed how scientists work and described what he saw. And I don't think Popper was exactly a fount of wisdom. In chapter 37 of his 1976 (1976!!) book Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography Popper says: Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program. Those are Popper's own words not mine, and this is not something to make Popper fans or fans of philosophers of science in general proud. Finally, two years later in 1978 at the age of 76 and 119 years after the publication of The Origin Of Species, perhaps the greatest scientific book ever written, Popper belatedly said: “I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation”. Better late than never I guess, he came to the conclusion that this Darwin whippersnapper might be on to something after all in his 1978 (1978!!) lecture Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind. On free will, I simply say that free will is knowing what you love or hate. In a previous post I said a particular set of likes and dislikes that in the English language is called will. Will is not the problem, it's free will that's gibberish. Free will doesn't seem to mean, in control of events. Free will doesn't seem to mean anything, not one damn thing; but a little thing like not knowing what the hell free will is supposed to be never prevents philosophers passionately arguing if humans have it or not. Apparently the philosophers on this list have decided to first determine if humans have free will or not and only when that question has been entirely settled will they go on and try to figure out what on earth they were talking about. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
