Philosophy
I've just listened to an episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage which asked 'Is philosophy dead?' There were good points and arguments bandied around but obviously I only get the impetus to post about the bad points
( Read more... )
First, philosophy and physics share a common root. One has evolved into physical experiments and the construction of models, initially simple ones with written rules, more recently complex mathematical ones. Physics gets lost quickly when it tries to describe "why" something happens; physics is all about predicting "what" will happen next. There are some rough edges of course, when a physicist predicts a theory that two different things are just complex expressions of the same rule (light is just distortion in electromagnetic fields, time is space etc) and then shows experimental data to "prove" this to be the case. But that isn't really about answering the big questions, on how the universe formed, why light travels in straight lines, what Gravity is made of, why tiny particles obey quantum wavefunction rules etc. I get annoyed at the great physicists for crap soundbytes that sound like religion. It's nice to know that Einstein wants to know God's thoughts, but it isn't something he ever made any progress on, or is any more qualified to discuss than my local greengrocer.
Philosophy, meanwhile, wandered into the territory of linguistics, and promptly got mugged. You follow any philosopher referenced in an undergraduate philosophy course on consciousness, and you will find they spend more time trying to define the domain of "what is consciousness?" than anything else.
I don't like the conclusion that Philosophy is there to say "Why?", to me Philosophical study has generally been about defining questions in ways they can be answered or at least considered clearly. If you ask "Will a computer ever be conscious?", a Philosopher is likely to ask in response "What do you mean by conscious?" If you define "conscious" as having an internal dialog, then you can create a computer specifically to have an internal dialog, et voila, a conscious computer. If you define it as "indistinguishable from a human", you get the Turing test (and again, a concsious computer).
Philosophy is not about answering the questions, it's about finding out if there is a question there at all, and providing a logical framework within which to define the problem. It is as related to Physics as English Literature is to Law. Physicists who think Philosophy is dead probably just need a better definition of what Philosophy is, because their definition seems to be simplistic and served no purpose.
Reply
Ooh - this! In fact, I agree with all of what you are saying. I think the reason that I was disappointed with the discussion on TIMC is that it used mainly negative arguments instead of positive ones, which could have explained to people why philosophy is still relevant, and is quite interesting really.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment