On Friday, December 6, 2019 at 5:21:25 PM UTC-6, Philip Thrift wrote: > > > > On Friday, December 6, 2019 at 3:48:25 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: >> >> >> >> On 12/6/2019 4:05 AM, Philip Thrift wrote: >> >> >> >> On Friday, December 6, 2019 at 5:42:13 AM UTC-6, Lawrence Crowell wrote: >>> >>> On Friday, December 6, 2019 at 12:59:15 AM UTC-6, Philip Thrift wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> https://philosophynow.org/issues/106/Wittgenstein_Frege_and_The_Context_Principle >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Frege was equally concerned to reject one kind of account of >>>> mathematical objectivity – the view that mathematical statements are made >>>> true by reference to abstract mathematical objects that are in some way >>>> real, even though we can’t see, touch or feel them. >>>> >>>> According to the Context Principle, the basic unit of sense is the >>>> proposition, or sentence. The sentence is the smallest unit of language >>>> which can be used to say anything at all. The meaningfulness of names and >>>> predicates is a matter of the place they occupy in the sentence, and also >>>> whether the sentence is true. Whether or not a name refers to an object, >>>> then, is a matter of the contribution the name makes to the truth of the >>>> whole sentence. >>>> >>>> @philipthrift >>>> >>> >>> This leads me to appreciate on some level why Feynman called this >>> philosofuzzy. >>> >>> LC >>> >> >> >> Which is why Feyerabend (who I think was together with Feynman when he >> came to some conferences in Berkeley) said >> >> The withdrawal of philosophy into a "professional" shell of its own has >> had disastrous consequences. The younger generation of physicists, the >> *Feynman*s <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman>, the >> Schwingers <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Schwinger>, etc., may >> be very bright; they may be more intelligent than their predecessors, than >> Bohr <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr>, Einstein >> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein>, Schrödinger >> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger>, Boltzmann >> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann>, Mach >> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mach> and so on. *But they are >> uncivilized savages: they lack in philosophical depth.* >> >> So true. >> >> >> Depth is no virtue when you're just muddying the water. >> >> >> @philipthrift >> >> >> Each philosopher knows a lot but, as a whole, philosophers don't know >> anything. If they did, they would be scientists. >> --- Ludwig Krippahl >> >> "The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to >> seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one >> will believe it." >> --- Bertrand Russell >> >> Philosophie ist der systematische Missbrauch einer eigens zu >> diesem Zweck entwickelten Terminologie." >> ---Wolfgang Pauli >> >> "The philosophy of science is just about as useful to scientists >> as ornithology is to birds." >> --- Steven Weinberg >> >> So is Feyerabend so sure his depth is more profound than theirs? >> >> Brent >> >> >> >> > What some scientist calls "philosofuzzy" (Frege, Wittgenstein, Quine) > perhaps is to hide their own fuzzy philosophy. (I can't find a reference > for Feynman ever using that term though). > > *Physicists Are Philosophers, Too* > Victor J. Stenger > https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-are-philosophers-too/ > > What we are seeing here is not a recent phenomenon. In his 1992 book > Dreams of a Final Theory, Nobel laureate *Steven Weinberg* has a whole > chapter entitled “Against Philosophy.” Referring to the famous observation > of Nobel laureate physicist Eugene Wigner about “the unreasonable > effectiveness of mathematics,” Weinberg puzzles about “the unreasonable > ineffectiveness of philosophy.” > > Weinberg does not dismiss all of philosophy, just the philosophy of > science, noting that its arcane discussions interest few scientists. He > points out the problems with the philosophy of positivism, although he > agrees that it played a role in the early development of both relativity > and quantum mechanics. He argues that positivism did more harm than good, > however, writing, “The positivist concentration on observables like > particle positions and momenta has stood in the way of a ‘realist’ > interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which the wave function is the > representative of physical reality.” > > Weinberg and [others], in fact, are expressing a platonic view of reality > commonly held by many theoretical physicists and mathematicians. They are > taking their equations and model as existing on one-to-one correspondence > with the ultimate nature of reality. > > @philipthrift >
It is not that, and few physicists think their equations are 1 to 1 with nature all the way. The point is to calculate things according to scheme that gives answers to questions. Spending lots of time concerned with the nature of language or whether things somehow correspond to reality in its fullness is not done. Feynman talked about Babylonian math vs Greek math, and while it is certainly worthy in the subject of mathematics to strive for hard proofs, in physics we are more interested in things that give results and answer questions about the world we observe. It might also be added that the foundations of mathematics is in a bit of a funk-fight-fest these days, where there are now systems of proof theory and the rest. When these sorts of philosophical issues get raised at some point I think scientists throw up their hands and say, "I have other things to do." LC -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e75d1b67-543e-4b69-9136-cd09331b4258%40googlegroups.com.
