Hi, Owen,
I read between the lines because I have heard you say things like that before. Now perhaps only to jerk my chain. But you have on more than one occasion in my presence aired the view that philosophy is unlike math or science because it has no final resting place, people can just keep arguing forever. I thought that this was an occasion where I might explain how that could be true, and yet irrelevant to the value of philosophy, in the same way that lack of empirical content is irrelevant to the value of mathematics. I actually thought you might like that point, but nobody seems to have caught it. Blah. But the truth is you did NOT say what I accused you of saying. Do I need to make a more through apology, or are we square. Hot. Mosquitoes. Best, Nick From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] 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 ---------- From: Owen Densmore <o...@backspaces.net> Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 11:02 AM Subject: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris To: Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> I just looked at the book review for Hawking and Mlodinow's book The Grand Design: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/45515 Although the book might be interesting, I was caught up by the statement Philosophy is Dead! Quote: The Grand Design 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. Odd. Note two things: - 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. -- Owen
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