General Philosophical discussion

[the.crooked]

I am lookin forward to thoughts.

[the.crooked]

Just a thought I needed to get out:

 

Rational thought and scientific execution are the same process as evolution, at least in terms of fitness. However the only difference is that we get to play god. We have the selective oversight to determine what the next mutation is in the thought we issue to be tested. Rather than submitting to random mutations which may become more successful than its predecessor, scientific theory, and rational inquiry at all is fed by the notion of fitness with a measure of control. We choose a mutation, only when the lack of fitness of one theory becomes apparent. But that we do it to make up for its lack of predictive capability shows our reliance on the fitness of our theories to predict upcoming events.

 

Rationality, then, is just as much a product of evolutionary game theory, than is consciousness and morality at large.

[the.crooked]

;5915060']Ill take time to read that crooked. Came across this article The New New Philosophy

 

I don't really like Kripke's writing all that much...

 

 

People who take such dismissive tones always get my philosophical goat.

 

The concept of experiment driven philosophy is exactly what I have been thinkin about the last several years.

 

The insulation every field of inquiry has enjoyed for years must come to an end.

 

In as much as philosophers are learning how to read fMRI's etc, so too should scientists be learning the epistemological discussions of Wittgenstein and Quine. So too should they be concerned with the structures of scientific thought, laid out in the works of Thomas Kuhn, etc.

 

I tried to have as a tagline to what I wrote for an entire year "its about time everyone get bitch slapped off their pedestal of necessary insulation."

[the.crooked]

ha, I ended up citing that article in my paper.

 

I am writing about the question of intention in language.

 

Particularly that we only ever question the rule which constructed any given statement of someone only when it appears we do not understand what they said.

 

Much the same like that point about not looking for intention in an act unless we need to ascertain whether the act was good or bad.

[the.crooked]

I finished my first chapter.

Chapter I For Everyone.doc

[MAR]

****

[the.crooked]

whatever you posted, MAR, is making a password script pop up. If you could take care of that or maybe a mod, I would be grateful.

[Juan Fuentes]

i knew all zionists were pedos.

12chan.org

[MAR]

bizarre. it didn't do it for me. i got the link from a friend.

 

 

here I rehosted it.

[the.crooked]

hehe.

[MAR]

I kinda put up that picture to open a new discussion. In my opinion science is like the physical application of philosophy. Physics, biology and chemistry cover aspects of metaphysics and grapples with epistemology. Logic has always played a key role in science as well as math. While science it self is technically devoid of religious beliefs there are many scientists who believe in a higher power, either before they delve into the field or after.

 

Personally, I believe that in one way or another what we do in life is a form or philosophic quest for self actualization. Be it through understanding the world around us or through attempting to make an impact on our surroundings.

 

[/rant]

[the.crooked]

Yup,

 

 

To quote Quine,

 

"Science, then, is on par with any other metaphysical argument."

[MAR]

Quine, as I understand, doesn't believe in synthetic or analytic philosophy, which is the basis of all hypothesis. From the little Ive read he seems hung up on linguistic semantics.

 

Its a little amusing to me that he decided to discuss synthetic and analytic philosophy as a Graphic Design major, seeing how Picasso and the rest of the cubist schools touched on it 30 years before him. The end result was IMHO the answer I gave. The visual linguistics of objects were challenged and yet people still understood what they were. Quine seemed to forget that philosophy is not math, there is no absolutes.

 

Theres a quote I was looking for that talks about how art tends to spawn new ideas, not that analytic or synthetic philosophy is new.

 

In addition I think science fails to cover ethics. While ethics might effect science, I don't think they don't really have a logical base in it.

[the.crooked]

No, that is not quite the argument.

 

 

 

The argument is for the lack of division between synthetic and analytic statements. Such a lack of distinction ends in the conclusion that science is no better than any other metaphysical argument. It argues for semantic holism and epistemological relativism. Follow me on a a history to Quine's argument. This was not about Analytic vs. Continental Philosophy. Also please understand that the reason Quine was caught up on semantics was because that was the very point of his type of philosophy. He was a philosopher of Mathematics, Logic, Language, Epistemology and Metaphysics. However his method was derived from the same rational impulse as science. He considered himself a pragmatic realist in his interpretation of science. Essentially saying that whichever theory worked best, it was those entities which comprised such an adequate theory that were actually the case in reality.

 

The analytic/synthetic distinction was introduced by Kant in his reconciliation of Modern philosophies of Descarte, Hume, and others. He claimed that there were four types of statements consisting of two dichotomies: 1) a priori & a posteriori 2) Analytic & Synthetic, The first categorization (1) comes from Descarte's cogito. A priori knowledge is knowledge which is not determinate upon experience. To doubt ones own faculty of doubting is a logical impossibility, This was later turned into the famous "cogito ergo sum." The second type in the first form is a posteriori; knowledge based on experience. Questions like 'Is it raining?' could be answered with such a type of statement: e.g. 'It is raining outside.'

 

The second dichotomy was to be understood as follows; Analytic and Synthetic. Either class is a title describing how the truth value of the statement is to be ascertained. In the former, Analytic, the relationship between the object and the predicate class of any sentence is determined within the concepts of each. The phrase, 'all bachelors are unmarried,' is true regardless of any information outside the referential definition of all the terms. For it is within the concept of "bachelorhood" that it is to be unmarried. Synthetic statements are statements where the relationship between the two concepts of a proposition is determined outside of the concepts themselves. If we consider the truth of the sentence 'The sun rises' we find that that we must rely on something outside of the definitions of the two words to determine whether the sentence is true or not.

 

 

 

 

I am very tired. I will continue this tomorrow.

 

The short version goes like this:

 

 

Quine rejects the difference between a priori Analytic statements (statements of logic, tautologies, philosophy under the guise of the 20th century Analytic tradition, metaphysics) and a posteriori Synthetic statements (statements of science, epistemology, eperiential representation. In an attempts to ascertain what the divide actually accounts for by running through the concepts of meaning under the concept "analyticity" he shows that it is in fact a spurious search of infinite regress. This destroys the concept of the divide between the to. Thus meaning and truth of statements becomes a holistic web of statements more dependent on experience on towards the outside of that web, and less dependent on the inside. The statements are also related and relative to each other by the shared occurence of strands of similar sequential patterns (what words are in which order in a particular sentence). We also retain the right to hold whatever statement to be true regardless of countless empirical evidence to the contrary. At an epistemological level then, if there is no division between the logical structure and conception of meaning between the two type of statements, then surely their metaphysical conclusions are not disparate let alone any more right than each other. Thus Science becomes just another short falling model of reality, on par with any philosophical argument and any aesthetic attempt at reduction of reality to form.

 

In reality, not only does this conclusion extend out to Science but of all products of human consistent rationality. Be this art, poetry, sports, music, acting, etc. it is all a production of human creation based on our interpretation of events in our lives and the language used to describe them.

 

 

I hope that gives you a better glimpse in to the dude's brilliance.

[MAR]

but doesn't that mean that all truths rely on outside knowledge? or is that what he's trying to say?

[the.crooked]

In some respects, yes.

 

 

Truth, then, is merely a question of choice.

[MAR]

but then there has to be absolute truths. unmarried men are unmarried.

[the.crooked]

Only in so much as you believe the concept "bachelor" to have something to do with "being unmarried."

 

Read this essay:

 

 

Two Dogmas of Empiricism. I will try to find you a link or a PDF.

 

Quine says it much better than I can paraphrase.

 

I think you will dig it. You will obviously be able to understand it. The writing is dry, but witty in an old anglo man sorta way.

[MAR]

im going to see if i can find it on paper. i hate reading on a computer.

[the.crooked]

fair enough. it should be pretty ubiquitous.

[Dawood]

I only read this last page, but if were talking concepts. We should at least be able to agree on the meanings of words if we're going to debate about anything. If we can't agree on even the meaning of the words we use from the origin of the language we're using, then we don't really have grounds to discuss anything.

[the.crooked]

That is the unfortunate truth of it though Dawood. Any word I use has a completely different set of meanings to you. All we can do is hope to align them enough to make it appear as though we know what we are saying. But that we do it effectively is what is amazing about our propensity to speak in such potentially abstract ways.

[Dawood]

Actually, words have meaning. I don't agree that words or phrases have interchangeable meanings. At least....Not most of the time. In rare occaisions, yes, but for the most part, the reason we have language is to understand.

[the.crooked]

what is metaphor then dawood?

[MAR]

or puns, slang, codes, etc.

 

words don't have anymore meaning then what they represent. they are there so that both you and I can communicate efficiently.

 

written language is even more representational, words are merely squiggles that represent sounds that represent objects or ideas.

[Dawood]

what is metaphor then dawood?

a metaphor is basically an example and if we can't agree on the meanings of things, then we can never have and effective debate to ever reach any conclusion. We talk to eachother and understand one another on here all day, so I don't see where the disconnect is.

Words represent meanings and sometimes take on different meanings when context is added to it..... add in phrases,slang...etc. It's definately regional, but we can't sit here and say that there is no standard meaning to words. Thats rediculous.

[the.crooked]

it is to say these seperations are all one of degree, not of kind. there is no such thing as fixed meaning. it is easier to say there is a custom of practice rather than a rule of law. if that makes sense.

[Removed]

good thread. not gonna be longwinded, so here goes:

 

anyone seen "the secret"?

about the universal laws of atrraction,

quantum physics, and manifesting your

own destiny according to universal laws.

 

i found it pretty neat. not sure if it's supposed

to be an inspirational video or not.

 

Man I expected alot more from your recomendation.

The secret is new age rubbish!

The only thing I found interesting (in the 15mins I could bare to watch) was how common it is for these new age type clowns to constantly falsely reference quantam physics to explain something or another. Credability? Out the window.

[Removed]

Crooked :

Keep posting in here, I enjoy reading it for sure!

[nova213]

The question is when we move down to the simplest of things, the building blocks for all things, and we look at their interaction do they include random variables in this interaction. If the answer is yes then chaos does rain. If it is no, well then we are a very complex snowball rolling down a very large hill. The question then beckons if God arranged the pieces and lit the fuse (the big bang) he is therefore free of this order, and is that the essence of our soul? An insertion of randomness outside of the orderly bound to us that truly does make us free?