[ExI] Why Physics Needs Philosophy

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Mar 30, 2016, at 5:37 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Mar 30, 2016  Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
> 
>> ​> ​Let me _stress_ this, since it's being missed: I know only one person who put forth Adler as a serious and important philosopher.
> 
> ​Forget Adler I'm not just talking about him, no philosopher has made a philosophical discovery in centuries, only mathematicians and scientist do that.    ​

That's doubtful. Theory of reference and intentionality were big topics from the end of the 19th century to today. Truth theory is also a fervent field even today. I think the pros are doing most of the best work in them.

>> ​> ​Gödel was a philosopher, no?
> 
> ​No. ​Godel was a mathematician who made profound philosophical discoveries, but philosophers are dilettantes  ​and Godel was about as far from a dilettante as you can get.​ 

No, he was a philosopher and a mathematician. The two are not mutually exclusive.

As for a dilettante, that's not a reasonable characterization of many professionals and others who tend to specialize in particular areas of research -- for example, Maudlin in philosophy of physics or Elliott Sober in philosophy of biology -- or who are fairly rigorous on their approach -- the aforementioned examples. I still get the idea that your view of philosophy is something like seeing some dope at the bar telling what he feels the meaning of life is. There are plenty of folks who do that in any field; they tend to be amateurs or professionals outside their area of specialty. (For example, when Einstein discusses politics and economics, we can easily see his views are rather naive, unoriginal, and fairly conventional among a certain set.)

Have you read any philosophy journal articles -- say, something in the Oxford Studies in Metaphysics? How about any recent classics books in the field -- say, Phil Dowe's _Physical Causation_?

> Bertrand Russell​ said only 3 people on earth had read his and Whitehead​'​​s ​​MASSIVE book on the foundations of mathematics cover to cover, and Kurt Godel was the third. ​
> 
> Now Ludwig Wittgenstein​ was a philosopher no question about it​,​ and many​, perhaps most​, say ​he was ​the greatest ​philosopher ​of the 20th century​;​ but what philosophic discovery did he make that was in the same league as Godel's triumph​ in philosophy​​? Wittgenstein was a​ pygmy​ next to Godel.​

Wittgenstein wasn't an example I brought up. And, no, professionals disagree on his stature in the field.

>> ​> ​What about Bertrand Russell,
> 
> ​I thing it was Russell who said that when I got too stupid for mathematics I turned to philosophy and when I got too stupid for philosophy I turned to politics. ​ 

He might have said that, though his philosophical work (for example, his work on theory of reference), even some of his greatest philosophical work, came before or at the same time as his work in math. And his work in math was foundational stuff mostly. He wasn't, for the most part, pioneering new areas of math, but attempting to rigorize the field and set it on a logical basis -- a philosophical project of ever there was one. (Of course, attempts to deal with foundational stuff sometimes lead to new areas of research -- as happened with attempts to firm up the basis of analysis eventually led to the while flurry of work ending in set theory, transfinite arithmetic, etc. in some of this, there might be a demarcation problem for what's philosophical and what's not. I think that arises in most fields. For instance, there's a rigorously empirical part of physics and then there's the more speculative stuff and there's also explanatory models. Where does science end and philosophy begin in all that? The line might be hard to draw and there might not be much value in drawing it -- unless one is dissing one part.)

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://author.to/DanUst

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20160331/41cdae2d/attachment.html>