Hi Dan!
What it is!
I came across this Logical Positivism term and was wondering what your view on it is. Your philosophic slant is obviously more Metaphyisicaly oriented, but it sounded pretty cool to me.
"Modern school of philosophy that in the 1920s attempted to introduce the methodology and precision of mathematics to the study of philosophy."
"The mathematician, Kurt Gadel, held that metaphysical speculation is nonsensical, and that logic and mathematical propositions are tautological, and that moral and value statements are merely emotive"
Pardon me for a minute while I go look up "Tautological"
Yep! It figures!
"Tautological" see tautologous
OK!
"Tautologous" 1: involving or containing rhetorical tautology; Redundant:
2:true by virtue of its logical form alone."
OK! Forget number 1, but Number 2 sounds about right.
Sounds to me then, if you were to ask old Kurt what 2+2 equals, theres a pretty good chance he would say 4.
I don't get the impression here that old Kurt would say, "WELLLL! Not necessarily cuz we ain't all that sure that the plus sign is really a plus sign even though it looks to be a plus sign, and who is to say what plus really means anyway in the grand scheme of things. A plus sign is nothing more than 2 minus signs at right angles to one another, so really, a plus could actually be a double minus sign which would indicate that 2 minus minus 2 is not a 4 at all but a -2."
Yeah! That works for me. How about you?
No wonder I can never balance the stupid check book. That dang 4 is really a -2. The Bank also verifies this by constantly reminding me that I ain't got any money.
Had a Trig Teach once that was esoterically inclined and did some fancy thing on the board one day to prove that 2+2 really equals 5.
I used his formula in the next test and got an "F" so maybe 2+2=4 after all.
Come to think of it, that famous picture of Albert Einstein standing in front of his blackboard with all sorts of mathematical jive all over it must have a 2 in there somewhere, and no doubt maybe even a 4 or two.
Do you suppose that if 2+2 did NOT actually equal 4 that the A-BOMB would have gone off.
Since the A-Bomb actually did go off, is that not like positive proof
that 2+2 really really does equal 4?
I might even venture to say that the A-Bomb and subsequently the H-Bomb "apodictally prove" that 2+2 is indeed 4.
I was cruising through a list of dead Philosopher guys and came across your namesake. John Duns Scotus(1266-1308)! Any relation?
Looks like he only made it to 42. He must of done a whole lot of thinking in a short time to get a whole system named after him.
For anybody interested, here is a link to Dan's long lost relative.
www.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/scotism.htm
Also came across an interview with your good buddy Saul Kripke.
Its at http://goinside.com/01/2/kripke.html
Interesting!
Q: "Is it negative that Philosophy now is connected to a proffessional career and not the unconditional search for truth it once was?"
Kripke: "Perhaps it never was an unconditional search for truth. The great philosophers did it as a proffessional career. The Medieval philosophers were Monks, but also professors. Descartes was not a professor, but did a lot of teaching."
Q. "Michael Durnmett claims that academics don't have any special duty to be engaged in social questions, but he claims that academics can make their own schedules and may use this privaledge. Do you agree with Durnmett?"
Kripke: "I don't think there is anything special academics can do."
Kripke: "The idea that philosophy should be relavant to life is a modern idea. A lot of philosophy does not have relevance to life."
Kripke claims both Plato and Aristotle did philosophy because of its intrinsic value. But he adds, "Ethics and political philosophy are relevant to life. The intension of philosophy was never to be relevant to life. But ethics and political philosophy can be relevant. Philosophy is a career like other things, but must not necessarily be related to that outside philosophy."
Interesting!
So, Philosophy is mostly just a career and not even relevant to life. And this streight from Kripke, one of the greatest thinkers in modern philosophy.
Well Dan, After reading up a bit on Kripke and the boys, I can see why your so tripped on figuring out if "H2O is Water and if Water is H2O"
You want to be on the "Dead Philosopher List." Right?
Or you want to get an invitation to Kripke's next Metamixer Barbeque Cotillion.
But Hey! Thats Cool! Anything for a buck and all that!
Tell old Saul I said Howdy!
Back in my more younger and idealistic period, I actually took two semesters of Philosophy. The gal that taught it was a real good teacher and smart and interesting. She even learned Russian good enough to moonlight as translator and interpreter. I suppose thats about as good as you can get. She also had a thing for Tetrahedons like it was something mythical like the pyramids.
I enjoyed the hell out it and even got one of my papers read out loud to the class, much to my dismay. Somehow or another, I managed to fit the entire Universe inside of an orange which tends to prove, in Metaphysics, the more weird you are the more likely you will be received. Or NOT! There is always another Metaguy just waiting to tear your paper to shreds just so that he can have a paper that can, in turn, get ripped to shreds by yet anther Metaguy.
But in the end as with all things Metaphysical, NOBODY really knows NOTHING.
As great an old gal that my philosophy teacher was and all, she did have this one habit that got a bit annoying. She was forever saying,"BY THE WAY". I'm sure she did it as a "Force of Habit" and payed it no mind, but it was enough that one started counting at the beginning of the lecture how many times she said "BY THE WAY". I counted enough BTWs to figure she said it on the average 50 times during a 40 minute lecture.
Oh well, thats really nothing since she was well liked and all.
But I did have this chemistry teacher who also by "Force of Habit"
liked to fill up a blackboard with problems, solve them and then erase everthing before you got a chance to figure out what was going on and then fill the blackboard back up again. This guy was a research chemist and had his head so far up his ass he could see daylight from the opposite end. This guy was so NOT a teacher it was pathetic.
Ah Well! Life goes on, Eh What?
Be Cool!
Joe
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