[Hi all, a few days free and wanted to check back. Everything is ok here! Moved out of the parents' house to live closer to university, now living in a nice appartment, preparing for a master in philosophy, lots of fun and study etc :). For those who still remember me, please tell me how you're doing!] For your amusement, I'm also having a little philosophical problem here. I know what to do with a proposition like "the earh is round" - Kant would say it is synthetic a posteriori. I simply think of an experiment that could falsify the proposition (Popper). For example, on a round earth a ship should become larger when it is approaching me while I am standing on the shore. If this indeed happens, the proposition is not falsified and remains standing. This is the basic structure of science: bold conjectures and refutations (it is incidentally also the basic structure of evolution) I can also think of philosophical statements which I very much suspect to be true, yet cannot be falsified in the way described above. Examples - The philosophical implication of Darwinism is the destruction of the Platonic idea or stable essence of things (for now species are changeable in themselves, i.e we can talk about an "origin" of species) - In Darwinism, the four causes of Aristotle are reduced to the material cause (i.e there is no teleological, formal or efficient cause needed to explain origin and evolution of species) - At the heart of science (somehow) "lies" the concept of control through technology - At the heart of all replicating entities (organisms, organisations, nations, the Junta) "lies" the avoidance of death. This is somehow related to authenticity as autos hentes 'being oneself'. As a concrete example, the Watchtower is constantly trying to sur-vive (Lat sur-vivere), thereby inauthentically denying what it really is: a radically finite entity. - Fear is always fear of something, while Angst somehow has to do with non-being (Heidegger). IF we concede that real a priori propositions do not exist (Quine) and a posteriori propositions can be addressed by science through falsification, what domain is left for Philosophy? How can the above examples be verified/falsified? Kind Regards, Deus Mauzzim P.S CAN SOMEONE PLEASE FORMAT THIS? :S LOL
The tyranny of the proposition
by DeusMauzzim 8 Replies latest jw friends
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Narkissos
Hi DM, nice to see you!
Here's an attempt at formatting. I'll be back.
Hi all, a few days free and wanted to check back. Everything is ok here! Moved out of the parents' house to live closer to university, now living in a nice appartment, preparing for a master in philosophy, lots of fun and study etc :).
For those who still remember me, please tell me how you're doing!]
For your amusement, I'm also having a little philosophical problem here.
I know what to do with a proposition like "the earh is round" - Kant would say it is synthetic a posteriori. I simply think of an experiment that could falsify the proposition (Popper). For example, on a round earth a ship should become larger when it is approaching me while I am standing on the shore. If this indeed happens, the proposition is not falsified and remains standing.
This is the basic structure of science: bold conjectures and refutations (it is incidentally also the basic structure of evolution)
I can also think of philosophical statements which I very much suspect to be true, yet cannot be falsified in the way described above. Examples
- The philosophical implication of Darwinism is the destruction of the Platonic idea or stable essence of things (for now species are changeable in themselves, i.e we can talk about an "origin" of species)
- In Darwinism, the four causes of Aristotle are reduced to the material cause (i.e there is no teleological, formal or efficient cause needed to explain origin and evolution of species)
- At the heart of science (somehow) "lies" the concept of control through technology
- At the heart of all replicating entities (organisms, organisations, nations, the Junta) "lies" the avoidance of death. This is somehow related to authenticity as autos hentes 'being oneself'. As a concrete example, the Watchtower is constantly trying to sur-vive (Lat sur-vivere), thereby inauthentically denying what it really is: a radically finite entity.
- Fear is always fear of something, while Angst somehow has to do with non-being (Heidegger).
IF we concede that real a priori propositions do not exist (Quine) and a posteriori propositions can be addressed by science through falsification, what domain is left for Philosophy? How can the above examples be verified/falsified?
Kind Regards, Deus Mauzzim -
DeusMauzzim
Thanks Narkissos! Nice to talk to you again as well! :D
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Narkissos
I'm back...
Detail nitpicking: even on a flat earth you'd see the ship getting larger as it gets closer to the shore; seeing the top first is the diacritical clue to the curve (if I understand correctly).
To a non-English mind, the homonymous ambiguity of the English verb "to lie" makes several of your "propositions" subject to an interesting double entendre. I suspect from your quotation marks around "lies" that you meant it so, but whatever the case it is worth making explicit.
Language lies indeed at the heart of both classical philosophy, including formal logic, and modern scientific theories which try to make sense of experience a posteriori. Language lies at the heart of theory making and falsification.
Our essential cognitive (and technical) tool, i.e. language, is also a built-in limit to knowledge.
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DeusMauzzim
Ok Mozilla is unable to format correctly and IE crashes on this comp, so I'll use dots instead :)................................. I meant top first of course, thanks for clearing that up..................I agree the problem is fundamentally one of language, which is like you said our principal cognitive/technical tool, so better to turn to that before the problem of propositions......... Language is a special tool indeed, because we cannot put it down, we live in it and it structures our world........ language provides one with an ontology from the start, the limits of the word (logos) are also the limits of discursive thinking (inter-legere)............................ You don't want to know how many hours I spent thinking about language, but here's what I've come up with until now.................... the principal differe/ance that language makes is that there suddenly are things AND words for things......... (I'm thinking right to the dawn of speech, even before distinctions like verbs, substantives etc).......... So how is this distinction made? What is the essence of naming? Various things are *taken together* (sunthesis) under one name........... the name therefore draws a definition (finis) or horizon (horismos) around various things, grounding them in reality, giving them substance, for the name is that what stands under (sub-stare) the various things.... by the process of naming the fleeting things become stable, because the name is always at hand and can be invoked at will................... So language grounds the world (wer-ald, the age of men), giving it its contours....... A name is always a universale, taking together some particularia of reality.... By this we can now understand how Plato got to his distinction (krisis) of essential being (idea) and existential becoming...... Plato just gave a real ontological status to the names, he hypostatized (hypostasis = substantia) them into a world of eternal ideas................. This has been the error of all metaphysics since then: hypostatizing universalia into real, existing things (which is onto-theology)................ Philosophy since Socrates/Plato has always asked about the *definition* of a name: what is beauty? what is friendship? What is the good? What is being? What is science? So philosophy really deals with the limits or horizons of our thinking, because it deals with the definitions/horizons of the words with which we think...................... The point of all this is that I suspect the horizons of words break up because of science, which is *practical* knowledge, linked to technology, control and ultimately survival, as Heidegger has shown.............. for example, in ancient philosophy man was defined as *animal rationale* or *zoon logon echoon*, then fast-forwarding some millenia this shrunk back to Descartes' *res cogitans* under influence of the scientific revolution, and finally in Darwinism the whole idea of rationality as belonging exclusively to man was destroyed...... (trees and flies are rational as well, they are rationally built machines used by their genes to replicate, just like man)................ but if in Darwinism the whole notion of a stable essence or *idea* (which was the hypostatized, metaphyiscal name being really 'out there') was destroyed, there is not much left for philosophy to do, now is there? :)........................................... Now picking up your notion of ambiguity of "lies", which I did not intend........ this is really the point of the linguistic turn, that far more than we using language as a tool language uses *us* - there is always an excess of meaning, for we cannot control the words (and now I move from Heidegger to Derrida)....... Does an opportunity for real philosophy *lie* here, or does it *lie*? Does not science, on the contrary, try to *disabiguate* as far as possible (mathematics being the best example, where we reach perfection through defining our own universe)?..........................Lol mind-boggling, Regards - DM
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Narkissos
The "linguistic turn" might lead philosophy to reassess Plato's strawmen, the Sophists...
Thinking language(s) (including "scientific language," even "linguistics" -- cf. Lacan, "there is no metalanguage") from within language(s) seems to be the horizon -- ironically, the main tool of knowledge so far has become the only possible object of knowledge ; and maybe the former object of knowledge -- the real -- can provide the tools (as in Derrida's deconstruction of language through writing).
It'll still be fun.
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hamilcarr
So language grounds the world (wer-ald, the age of men), giving it its contours....... A name is always a universale, taking together some particularia of reality.... By this we can now understand how Plato got to his distinction (krisis) of essential being (idea) and existential becoming...... Plato just gave a real ontological status to the names, he hypostatized (hypostasis = substantia) them into a world of eternal ideas................. This has been the error of all metaphysics since then: hypostatizing universalia into real, existing things (which is onto-theology)................ Philosophy since Socrates/Plato has always asked about the *definition* of a name: what is beauty? what is friendship? What is the good? What is being? What is science? So philosophy really deals with the limits or horizons of our thinking, because it deals with the definitions/horizons of the words with which we think...................... The point of all this is that I suspect the horizons of words break up because of science, which is *practical* knowledge, linked to technology, control and ultimately survival, as Heidegger has shown..............
The paradox of philosophy in a wordless or a worldless world?
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Narkissos
Or, worldless words in a wordless world.
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DeusMauzzim
Haha thanks for linking that :D