Re: Philosophy vs. science
Posted by
Nick Thompson on
Jul 12, 2011; 11:06pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Philosophy-vs-science-tp6573103p6577139.html
Sorry, Owen.
I read too much between the lines.
I of all people should NOT assume that a questioner must accept premises inferred from questions he might ask.
Thanks for the correction.
Nick
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 12:38 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Philosophy vs. science
Nick sez:
Glen,
Sorry if I have been obtuse. It's partly because I can be obtuse and partly because my means of communication here at the farm are so primitive that errors are easy to make and easy to get out of control.
I had just about decided that I shouldn't participate much in FRIAM discussions over the summer, and then, suddenly, there was Owen, declaring that philosophy was dead because it was not empirical.
Nick, you REALLY should re-read my original post:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 11:02 AM
Subject: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris
I just looked at the book review for Hawking and Mlodinow's book The Grand Design:
Although the book might be interesting, I was caught up by the statement Philosophy is Dead!
begins with a series of questions: "How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves?", "How does the universe behave?", "What is the nature of reality?", "Where did all this come from?" and "Did the universe need a creator?". As the book's authors, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, point out, "almost all of us worry about [these questions] some of the time", and over the millennia, philosophers have worried about them a great deal. Yet after opening their book with an entertaining history of philosophers' takes on these fundamental questions, Hawking and Mlodinow go on to state provocatively that philosophy is dead: since philosophers have not kept up with the advances of modern science, it is now scientists who must address these large questions.
- The subject ends in what word?
- The last word in the post was what?
It seemed that what he meant by philosophy was lofty conversations by people who knew nothing about what they were talking about. Well, of course, THAT sort of activity always HAS been dead. But you don't get to be a philosopher by donning a tunic and sandals and talking vaguely concerning matters about which you are ignorant. Really you don’t! And I don’t care if you are on TED, when you are doing it.
I haven't read the paper starting this thread .. it would take 3 days. But I have finished my CS591 final project and, wandering around thinking What Next, I got engaged with the Philosophy of Justice vide series and started watching it .. I'm about 1/3 through and find it fascinating.
If you look at my prior questions, they were basic questions on consequentialism .. how to create the metric, and how to deal with aggregation. Michael cleverly deals with them via a sort of socratic method and I realized my questions were simply beyond the scope of the class thus asked my Learned Colleagues, none of whom answered the question.
We should use the phone when your are Gone from Here and at least we'll avoid my obvious blunders which have lead you Astray.
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