Comments

  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    This thread itself is not even philosophical.Lionino

    It is about metaphilosophy and computational philosophy based on the philosophy of mathematics.

    For you, however, every thread is ultimately always about criticism on people ... except criticism on yourself.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    Language doesn't think about itself.creativesoul
    Of course, it doesn't.

    First-order logic -- in absence of arithmetic -- cannot express sentences about its own sentences. It requires Godel numbering for that purpose which in turn requires arithmetic.

    When Godel numbering is available, a person (or a computer) can produce sentences in first-order logic that express sentences that are about other sentences in first-order logic.

    A computer does not think but it can output sentences.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    In fact, go ahead and feed ChatGPT a bunch of texts, it will tell you which is philosophy and which is not.Lionino

    If you ask ChatGPT about face detection, it will advise you to try OpenCV.

    https://medium.com/@vdkolekar/face-detection-implementation-using-chatgpt-622ab3a61df2
    (Face Detection implementation using ChatGPT)

    ChatGPT cannot do face detection by itself. It will refer you to a specialized engine for visual object detection.

    Same with advice on converting PDF to audio. ChatGPT advises to use a specialized engine for PDF (PyPDF2) and one for text-to-speech synthesis (gTTS):

    https://medium.com/@vdkolekar/pdf-to-audio-using-chatgpt-ed6d07b98733

    ChatGPT does not seem to be itself a specialized engine for anything, actually.

    In order to implement philosophy detection based on the definition that I propose, a specialized engine would be required that translates natural English into first-order arithmetic. The only engine I found that could possibly be shoehorned in that direction, is old unsupported abandonware called SPF from Cornell University:

    https://github.com/lil-lab/spf

    It's not that you can just feed SPF a sentence in English and that SPF will give you the output in the syntax of first-order arithmetic. Instead, SPF looks rather unusable.

    Again, there are no budgets for this kind of things. You can much more easily get money for detecting dogs, rabbits, or loose cattle in the field than for philosophy.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    But they are not developing a definition of "dog".Ludwig V

    Actually, they are.

    It is not in the form of natural language sentences, but in the form of a numerical data structure.

    For example, in the following article, they develop a definition for the human face. It is contained in the configuration file haarcascade_frontalface_default.xml. It allows them to do the folllowing:

    https://machinelearningmastery.com/using-haar-cascade-for-object-detection/

    # Load the Haar cascade for face detection
    face_cascade = cv2.CascadeClassifier(cv2.data.haarcascades + 
                 'haarcascade_frontalface_default.xml')
     
    # Read the input image
    img = cv2.imread(filename)
     
    # Convert the image to grayscale
    gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
     
    # Perform face detection
    faces = face_cascade.detectMultiScale(gray, scaleFactor=1.1, 
          minNeighbors=4, minSize=(20, 20))
     
    # Draw rectangles around the detected faces
    for (x, y, w, h) in faces:
        cv2.rectangle(img, (x, y), (x+w, y+h), (255, 0, 0), 2)
    

    For all intents and purposes, the configuration data in haarcascade_frontalface_default.xml contains an abstract definition for the human face.

    At the basis of the classifier is a very, very poor definition of what a visual object is:

    Since the technique developed by Paul Viola and Michael Jones in 2001, Haar features and Haar cascades have revolutionized object detection.

    Haar features are extracted from rectangular areas in an image. The feature’s value is based on the pixel intensities. Usually, it is calculated using a sliding window, and the area within the window is partitioned into two or more rectangular areas. Haar feature is the difference in the sum of pixel intensities between these areas.

    It is believed that an object’s presence will distort the variation of pixel intensity. By checking the pixel intensity between neighboring rectangular areas, you should be able to notice a difference. Hence it is indicative of the object’s presence.

    The key idea behind Haar cascade is that only a small number of pixels among the entire image is related to the object in concern. Therefore, it is essential to discard the irrelevant part of the image as quickly as possible.

    For machine learning, you do indeed need some notion of what you are looking for. However, it does not need to be perfect at all. Visual object detection is not based on a particularly correct definition of what a visual object is. It is based on a rule of thumb that apparently works out really well.

    The presence of Gödel numbering in a sentence, is a notion that is much more directly related to the definition for philosophy than the haar feature is related to a definition for visual object. Using the notion of haar feature in visual object detection works like a charm already. Perfection is absolutely not needed. In fact, perfection is the enemy of good.

    people-haar-detected-1024x683.jpg
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    Personally speaking I think of 'Philosophy' as essentially meaning "ways of thinking about ..." rather than "love of knowledge," which is too question begging for me.I like sushi

    One major problem with any definition for philosophy is the following remark:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_philosophy

    Another characterization of philosophy sometimes found in the literature is that, at least in principle, it does not take any facts for granted and allows any presupposition to be questioned, including its own methods.[7][11] This is reflected in the fact that philosophy has no solid foundations to build on since whatever foundations one philosopher accepts may be questioned by another.

    There is no definition for philosophy.

    There is only a collection of partially failed attempts.

    The one closest to my own definition of "statements about other statements" is "Thinking about thinking":

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy

    Another definition characterizes philosophy as thinking about thinking to emphasize its self-critical, reflective nature.

    Overgaard, Søren; Gilbert, Paul; Burwood, Stephen (2013). "What Is Philosophy?". An Introduction to Metaphilosophy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-19341-2.

    Your own proposal of "ways of thinking" is also very close to "thinking about thinking".

    I do not look at the process itself -- a black box really -- but only at its output, i.e. statements.

    Furthermore, by cutting out the human element, the definition lends itself more readily to computational philosophy.

    While a computer can certainly analyze a large body of text, it cannot meaningfully analyze a large number of people while they are actively thinking.

    In order to achieve an objective, shared understanding, it is in my opinion preferable to use a reproducible method of analysis.

    It may leave out important subsections of philosophy, such as philosophy of the mind, but in my opinion, the benefit of doing so, is greater than the cost.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    Statements don't talk.creativesoul

    The idea revolves around a statement making use of the Godel numbering capability in its language to refer to another statement or even to itself.

    This capability is a prerequisite for a language to be its own metalanguage and hence to be capable of philosophy.

    In first-order arithmetic it is relatively easy to detect the use of Godel numbering. If the Godel numbering symbol appears anywhere in the expression, then the expression is -- according to this definition -- philosophical.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    I suspect
    "a foundational crises in mathematics"
    — jgill
    is to be understood as "I don't get it!"
    Banno

    The term can be traced back to Russell's criticism on Frege's publication on the foundations of mathematics:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foundations_of_Arithmetic

    The Foundations of Arithmetic (German: Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik) is a book by Gottlob Frege, published in 1884, which investigates the philosophical foundations of arithmetic.

    Although Bertrand Russell later found a major flaw in Frege's Basic Law V (this flaw is known as Russell's paradox, which is resolved by axiomatic set theory), the book was influential in subsequent developments, such as Principia Mathematica.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_paradox

    Russell wrote to Frege about the paradox just as Frege was preparing the second volume of his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik.

    Frege then wrote an appendix admitting to the paradox,[17] and proposed a solution that Russell would endorse in his Principles of Mathematics,[18] but was later considered by some to be unsatisfactory.[19]

    It is Godel's incompleteness theorem (1931) that eventually proved that the foundational crisis cannot be solved.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    I was just commenting on your referring to "a foundational crises in mathematics". I doubt many mathematicians would agree there is a "crises". Concerns perhaps.jgill

    I actually did not invent the term "foundational crisis of mathematics" by myself:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_mathematics

    The foundational crisis of mathematics arose at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century with the discovery of several paradoxes or counter-intuitive results.

    Several schools of philosophy of mathematics were challenged with these problems in the 20th century, and are described below.

    These problems were also studied by mathematicians, and this led to establish mathematical logic as a new area of mathematics,

    They even write entire books about the foundational crisis of mathematics:

    Ferreiros, J. (2008), Gowers, Timothy (ed.), "The Crisis in the Foundations of Mathematics", Princeton Companion to Mathematics, Princeton University Press, retrieved 2022-08-26

    Robič, Borut (2015), Robič, Borut (ed.), "The Foundational Crisis of Mathematics", The Foundations of Computability Theory, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 9–30, doi:10.1007/978-3-662-44808-3_2, ISBN 978-3-662-44808-3, S2CID 124817202, retrieved 2022-08-26
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    How is all this relevant for defining philosophy? How is this the relevant to philosophy in any way?Ludwig V

    It was a direct answer to your question.

    Your question about dog behavior may indeed not be directly relevant to the definition of philosophy.

    All of this originally came up as a remark that the definition for"philosophy" does not need to be computable any more than the definition for "dog" needs to be

    I pointed out that there are actually budgets for doing exactly that, i.e. computability of "dog".

    Here we go again, assuming a stroll along an uneven path is the same as wandering through a minefield.jgill

    So, the idea is that the use of Godel numbering in a logic expression points to making use of the philosophical capability of the language and therefore turns the expression into a philosophical one. There may be exceptions, though.

    It makes the notion of philosophy eminently computable. Computability is a requirement for machine learning.

    In the meanwhile, I have discovered that this view is absolutely not new:

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-philosophy/

    Computational philosophy is the use of mechanized computational techniques to instantiate, extend, and amplify philosophical research. Computational philosophy is not philosophy of computers or computational techniques; it is rather philosophy using computers and computational techniques. The idea is simply to apply advances in computer technology and techniques to advance discovery, exploration and argument within any philosophical area.

    Computational philosophy is deemed promising and useful:

    There is one extremely promising area in need of development within computational philosophy, though that area may also call for changes in conceptions of philosophy itself. Philosophy has classically been conceived as abstract rather than concrete, as seeking understanding at the most general level rather than specific prediction or retrodiction, often normative, and as operating in terms of logical argument and analysis rather than empirical data. The last of these characteristics, and to some extent the first, will have to be qualified if computational philosophy grows to incorporate a major batch of contemporary techniques: those related to big data.



    Hence, concerning your question, "How is this the relevant to philosophy in any way?", there is your answer, and it is called, "Computational philosophy". It is actually a gigantic subdiscipline.

    Benzmüller, Christoph and David Fuenmayor, 2018, “Can Computers Help to Sharpen Our Understanding of Ontological Arguments?” in S. Gosh, R. Uppalari, K. Rao, V. Agarwal, and S. Sharma (eds.), Mathematics and Reality: Proceedings of the 11th All Indian Students’ Conference on Science and Spiritual Quest (AISSQ), Bhudabenswar, Kolkata: The Bhaktiedanta Institute, pp. 195–226.

    Dennett, Daniel, 1979, “Artificial Intelligence as Philosophy and as Psychology”, in Philosophical Perspectives in Artificial Intelligence, Martin Ringle (ed.), Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, pp. 57–80.

    Fitelson, Branden and Edward N. Zalta, 2007, “Steps Toward a Computational Metaphysics”, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 36(2): 227–247. doi:10.1007/s10992-006-9038-7

    Grim, Patrick, Gary R. Mar, and Paul St. Denis, 1998, The Philosophical Computer: Exploratory Essays in Philosophical Computer Modeling, Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

    Horner, Jack K., 2019, “A Computationally Assisted Reconstruction of an Ontological Argument in Spinoza’s The Ethics”, Open Philosophy, (special issue on computational philosophy) 2(1): 211–229. doi:10.1515/opphil-2019-0012

    Kirchner, Daniel, Christoph Benzmüller, and Edward N. Zalta, 2019, “Computer Science and Metaphysics: A Cross-Fertilization”, Open Philosophy, (special issue on computational philosophy) 2(1): 230–251. doi:10.1515/opphil-2019-0015

    Oppenheimer, Paul E. and Edward N. Zalta, 2011, “A Computationally-Discovered Simplification of the Ontological Argument”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 89(2): 333–349. doi:10.1080/00048401003674482

    Pence, Charles H. and Grant Ramsey, 2018, “How to Do Digital Philosophy of Science”, Philosophy of Science, 85(5): 930–941. doi:10.1086/699697

    Rushby, John, 2018, “A Mechanically Assisted Examination of Begging the Question in Anselm’s Ontological Argument”, Journal of Applied Logics, 5(7): 1473–1496.

    Shults, F. LeRon, 2019, “Computer Modeling in Philosophy of Religion”, Open Philosophy, (special issue on computer modeling in philosophy) 2(1): 108–125. doi:10.1515/opphil-2019-0011

    Thagard, Paul, 1988, Computational Philosophy of Science, Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

    Van Den Hoven, Jeroen and Gert‐Jan Lokhorst, 2002, “Deontic Logic and Computer‐Supported Computer Ethics”, Metaphilosophy, 33(3): 376–386. doi:10.1111/1467-9973.00233

    Wheeler, Billy, 2019, “Computer Simulations in Metaphysics: Possibilities and Limitations,” Manuscrito, 42(3): 108–148

    Godel numbering could actually be to computational philosophy what the haar-like feature is to computer-based visual object recognition.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    Who decides what behaviour is problematic or when the dog's well-being is undermined? Not the machine, that's for sure. It may save donkey-work, but it isn't capable of telling us anything we don't know.Ludwig V

    They have managed to convince the Ministry of Health that the project is worth doing and therefore worthwhile for them to fund it.

    The thing with grant proposals is that you have to know what the other side is willing to pay for.

    In fact, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are even much bigger spenders. When they get interested, they buy up the entire startup and add it to their growing collection of curiosa.

    In the industry of building R&D curiosa, you have to be open minded.

    I guess that 75% of the projects that I ever worked on, ultimately failed to achieve their objective, even though I preselected them for their potential for success, avoiding the potential frustration of initiatives that in my opinion could not possibly succeed.

    If you are too critical, you don't do anything at all. In this industry, it means that you simply don't make any money either. I guess that my experience has made me biased towards more instead of less risk.

    You may simply have to assume that the promotor of this project knows what he is doing. I don't know anything about dog behaviour, but I would just assume that the project owner does. Since someone else at the Ministry of Health is also willing to pay for the project owner's mistakes, I would give him the benefit of the doubt.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    The word philosophy doesn't have to be computable any more than the word 'dog' does.Lionino

    One example for the computability of the term "dog":

    https://www.cvedia.com/animal-detection

    Animal and wildlife detection using CVEDIA-RT.

    Deep learning powered by synthetic data

    What is animal detection ‍using deep learning.

    Animal detection involves finding wildlife or pets in photos or videos. Traditional computer vision techniques, such as motion detection, caused false alarms and drained camera batteries, but deep learning has improved accuracy and added the ability to classify animal species. This is crucial for monitoring specific animals in the wild and alerting people to pests or predators.

    Another example:

    https://aimagelab.ing.unimore.it/imagelab/project.asp?idprogetto=49

    A computer vision system for the evaluation of the behaviour and the well-being of the dogs housed in the shelter

    The project, funded by the Ministry of Health, aims to develop a computer vision system that monitors the well-being of the dogs housed in shelters with the use of 3D images acquisition sensors. The system shall analyze automatically and continuously the behavior of dogs in the short and especially long-term, detecting anomalies that may be induced by a malaise of the animals, reporting alerts to the experts and staff.

    There are massive research and development budgets for "dog" object-recognition and monitoring systems.

    The budgets for the term "dog" are obviously dwarfed by the amount of money being invested in systems that revolve around the term "cattle" or "flock of hens".

    If you want to get a better understanding of what the term "a lot of money" means, then look at the R & D budgets for agriculture.

    The funny thing is that "statements about statements", i.e. philosophy, is absolutely pervasive in our use of abstractions. It touches everything. In my opinion, it even explains some of the metaphysics of the universe.

    However, there are apparently no budgets for that.

    I think that this is a wrong choice. Other systems would be so much more effective, if we came to grips with their common-most general underlying notion.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    changing definitions altogetherLionino

    There is no definition for the term philosophy. There is only a large collection of (partially failed) attempts.

    Replacing the existing alternative definition "thinking about thinking" by "statement about statement" has the tangible advantage that it becomes an eminently computable definition. At that point, a machine can do it too.

    The goal is to supply a functional underlying notion usable for the purpose of machine learning.

    We have tools for object recognition, music detection, and many other discrimination and classification software systems. A computable definition for philosophy would allow us to pick philosophical statements out of their textual environment.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    That doesn't make any sense. No need to take this any further.T Clark

    That doesn't make any sense ... to you. If you understood it, it would.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    But I can't help feeling that that your project would be more relevant if the most important requirement was that the definition was correct.Ludwig V

    The notion of Haar-like feature is not even a particularly good definition for "visual object". It is good enough, however, to build systems with that recognize faces in a crowd.

    Better underlying notions would lead to better object recognition. It would undoubtedly fail less often.

    What does not work, however, is perfectionism. Perfect is the enemy of good.

    Lawyers translating international treaties are not going to settle for "right most of the time".Ludwig V

    They would obviously not use automated translation. But then again, automated translation can still speed up the work of a human translator. In the 10% of the time that it is inadequate, he will correct the output.

    Tchaikovsky uses cannon-fire in the 1812 overture. Music? Not Music? Depends on the use the sound is put to.Ludwig V

    Perfect is the enemy of good. Should Deezer research improve Spleeter for that? Not sure about that ...

    So a machine trained on philosophy up to 1900 may or may not correctly identify philosophy written a hundred years later.Ludwig V

    Language also changes. English today is not exactly the same language as in the 16th century.

    The need to adjust things to changing definitions is a good problem to have. It means that the system already works for the existing situation. That is not necessarily future-proof, but that is rather a problem to fix if and when it occurs.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    I don't understand you responses to my statements. Seems like you're just stretching your definition to fit my examples.T Clark

    As soon as you can write the sentence as one that contains the pattern K(#S), i.e. a property of a statement, it is philosophical.

    Asserting a property of a statement is a statement about a statement.

    It works out of the box for Tao and Kant's general assertion about knowledge.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    Another philosophical statement that doesn't meet the standard:

    Philosophy is a mathematical capability of the language at hand.
    Lionino

    hasGödelNumbering(#languageDefinition) => isPhilosophicalLanguage(#languageDefinition)

    I think that it matches the definition.

    Note: Even English has just standard UTF-8 as Gödel numbering. You can do arithmetic in English and express the UTF-8 algorithm in plain English. The problem will be the language definition of English. A rather poor definition from something like Google Translate could possibly be used.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal TaoT Clark

    This goes straight to Yanofsky's characterization of the truth, i.e. most truth is ineffable:

    eternal(#S) => ineffable(#S)
    or
    ¬ ineffable(#S) => ¬ eternal(#S)

    It revolves around properties of sentences. So, I think that this example is actually captured by the definition.

    God will not have his work made manifest by cowards - EmersonT Clark

    toManifest(_owner, _byWhom, _work)

    ∀ _work ( ¬ toManifest(God, cowards, _work) )

    It is a 3-argument predicate while none of the arguments are sentences. This is a similar problem as JohnSaid(#S) or Said(John, #S).

    This definition can definitely not handle persons involved, such as "by whom" or "for whom".

    If it were not about God, but about an arbitrary person John, then it would be about a physical fact. For example, "John will not have his work made manifest by cowards". In my opinion, "by whom" and "for whom" tend to point to physical facts.

    All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason - KantT Clark

    Knowledge(#S) <-> ( Stage1Senses(#S) ∧Stage2Understanding(#S) ^ Stage3Reason(#S) )

    S has property Knowledge if and only if S has senses in stage1 and ...

    In my opinion, it seems to work.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    Cutting to the chase, I suggest that you need to clarify in your own mind whether you wish to capture the existing use of the term "philosophy" or stipulate a definition to be used in a specific context.Ludwig V

    I am interested in a computable predicate, i.e. a computer program or a function, that will be able to distinguish between statements that are philosophical and statements that are not. Therefore, the most important requirement is that it can be implemented as source code.

    However, the output does not need to be correct all the time.

    We do not require that from Google Translate either. It just needs to be correct "most of the time" or "substantially more often than not".

    BTW, is meta-philosophy philosophy or not? - is that a philosophical question? It seems to be an extension of a concept that is used (and therefore defined) within a specific context, which may or may not be considered to be philosophical.Ludwig V

    Is philosophical(#S) is a statement about statement S. So, in this definition, the metaphilosophy is a subdivision of philosophy.

    Dogmatically, I would start by saying that philosophy is a practice (or a family of inter-related practices), the scope of which is effectively defined by what its practitioners do when they are philosophizing.Ludwig V

    That would be compatible with the ChatGPT approach.

    Let the algorithm read a large sample of philosophy, summarize it into an appropriate numerical data structure, and then get it to discriminate inputs between philosophy and not philosophy.

    This approach will undoubtedly still require an underlying notion of what exactly to extract and summarize from the sample ("machine learning"), and therefore, what exactly matters when trying to distinguish philosophy from the alternative.

    For example, object recognition in computer vision ultimately rests on relatively simple underlying notions such as haar-like features, without which the discrimination algorithm would not even work properly.

    Therefore, without some basic notion of at least what to look for in a sentence, the philosophy-detection algorithm's ability to discriminate can be expected to be disappointingly poor.

    One may compare music or the visual or performance arts, or even science itself.Ludwig V

    It is actually possible to detect if any particular sound is music or not, with a tool such as Spleeter from Deezer research:

    https://research.deezer.com/projects/spleeter.html

    There are, of course, more research budgets available for music than for philosophy. So, the fact that a discrimination algorithm exists for music and not one for philosophy, should not come as a surprise.

    Not all sound is music. Thus, there are algorithms available that can quite precisely discriminate between music and other sounds.

    The discrimination problem is not necessarily easier for music than for philosophy. It is just that there are people who have worked on a solution for music but not on one for philosophy.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    What is your objective here?Jaded Scholar

    Google Translate is not 100% accurate but it is quite good nonetheless. It could be interesting to have the starting point for something that can detect philosophical sentences. Most existing definitions are not suitable for that purpose just like most language textbooks would never be a good starting point for building Google Translate. I think that Gödel's theorem suggests a more interesting starting point. Some predicates must be excluded and philosophy of the mind requires a different approach. Besides that, I think that things are still nicely on target.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    And you proposed

    isPhilosophical(#S) IFF S is about another statement.

    And I gave examples of statements that were about other statements, but not philosophical, and statements that are philosophical, but not about other statements.

    So your definition is void.
    Banno

    Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" is a problem. It is covered by "thinking about thinking" but not by "statements about statements". We cannot expect Godel's work to cover philosophy of the mind by using arithmetic. So, it leads to two definitions: "philosophy not of the mind" and "philosophy of the mind".

    The statements about statements that are not philosophical was about predicates such as PeterSaidThat(#S). So, predicates that merely indicate the origin of a sentence may also be excluded from the definition. It just means that not all predicates are allowed. So, it may mean that there is a list of permissible predicates (or a list of excluded ones).
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    So you agree it is philosophical, but it is not a statement about another statement, and so doesn't meet your definition.Banno

    The definition for philosophy is a predicate:

    isPhilosophical(#S)

    which is true if S is philosophical.

    So, the definition of philosophy is the source code for a particular predicate.

    isPhilosophical(#S) is a statement about any other statement S.

    Your definition of "philosophy" seems to include things unnecessary and insufficient to philosophy.Banno

    Possibly. That requires an investigation of possible counterexamples. I think that these counterexamples should be quite interesting. Why exactly are they legitimate counterexamples? That will probably shine some more light on the issue.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    Or is it a statement about the meaning of words? Like a definition is about the meaning of words.
    Oh dear - it looks like your topic is not philosophical according to your own definition. Does that trouble you at all?
    unenlightened

    I think that the definition of a word is an abstraction about an abstraction, a statement about a statement. It is clearly a language expression about another language expression. So, I think that the definition of the term philosophy is a philosophical question. The literature even terms it a "metaphilosophical" question.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    So are you claiming that these sentences, each famously part of important philosophical discussions, are actually not philosophical?

    You sure you want to do that?
    Banno

    "I think therefore I am" is problematic. Not sure what to do with that. It would fit fine with "thinking about thinking" but not with necessarily with "statements about statements". The problem with philosophy of the mind is that it necessarily always rests on introspection, which badly damages the potential to have an objective, shared understanding on the matter.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    "Know thyself" is not a logic sentence. It is not true or false.

    "Here is a hand" is a statement about a physical fact.

    "I think, therefore I am". S => Q does not mention any predicate about a statement. Furthermore, P and Q are arguably physical facts. Unless "I am" is written by using a predicate as: exists(me). However, "me" is not a sentence. The sentence may be considered philosophical even though it is not recognized by the definition as such. Interesting potential counterexample!

    "The world is all that is the case". It is a statement about the world, which is a physical fact.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    Anyway, the definition you offer is trivially too broad. "John said it is raining" is about a statement, but not philosophy.Banno

    If SaidByJohn(#S) is a legitimate predicate, then your example sentence would indeed satisfy the definition proposed.

    If this is a problem, then how can we exclude it from the definition?

    There are precedents for excluding predicates from Godel's language. For example, true(#S) is not definable.

    In fact, it would also be interesting to elaborate why exactly your example sentence is not philosophical.

    Another angle would be to find a statement that is philosophical but that does not satisfy the definition.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    I notice since you've joined that you have a strong tendency to devise your own definitions, interpretations and standards for what constitutes philosophy.Wayfarer

    For a starters, the term philosophy does not have a single definition:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy

    Academic definitions

    Attempts to provide more precise definitions of philosophy are controversial[17] and are studied in metaphilosophy.[18]

    Precise definitions are often only accepted by theorists belonging to a certain philosophical movement and are revisionistic according to Søren Overgaard et al. in that many presumed parts of philosophy would not deserve the title "philosophy" if they were true.[20]

    Some definitions characterize philosophy in relation to its method, like pure reasoning.

    Many definitions of philosophy emphasize its intimate relation to science.[24] In this sense, philosophy is sometimes understood as a proper science in its own right.

    Other definitions focus on the contrast between science and philosophy.

    Another definition characterizes philosophy as thinking about thinking to emphasize its self-critical, reflective nature.[31]

    The definition that I propose, is actually not particularly new. It is quite close to thinking about thinking:

    Overgaard, Gilbert & Burwood 2013, pp. 36–37, 43, What Is Philosophy?
    Nuttall 2013, p. 12, 1. The Nature of Philosophy

    "Thinking about thinking" and "statements about other statements" are notions that are very close to each other.

    The origin for what I write, is of course, the foundational crisis in mathematics. I believe that it sheds new light not just on metaphysics but also on metaphilosophy.

    Again, Godel's seminal publication is now almost a century old.

    Its implications have, however, not been absorbed outside the narrow field of mathematical logic. There are many reasons for that; one of which is the fact that the language of mathematical logic is considered to be impenetrable.

    One goal of metaphilosophy is to finally discover a usable definition for philosophy. I think that Godel's theorem can help with that.
  • Any objections to Peter Singer's article on the “child in the pond”?
    However, that is okay for Singer, because helping the poor (or whether the duty of helping the very poor when we have extra money) can be done without the help of humanitarian organizations. Maybe Singer should have insisted on that moreLFranc

    Agreed. The moral obligation certainly exists in Islam in the form of zakaat, i.e. the mandatory charity levy.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat

    Zakat (or Zakāh) is one of the five pillars of Islam.[a][3] Zakat is a form of almsgiving, often collected by the Muslim Ummah.[1] It is considered in Islam a religious obligation,[4][5] and by Quranic ranking, is next after prayer (salat) in importance.[6]

    As one of the Five Pillars of Islam, zakat is a religious duty for all Muslims who meet the necessary criteria of wealth to help the needy.[7][8] It is a mandatory charitable contribution, often considered to be a tax.[9][10]

    So, in Islamic terms, Singer's apostolic exhortatation translates into:

    Don't forget to donate zakaat!
  • The essence of religion
    Fourth, Wittgenstein did not see any value in intellectual proofs of God's existence or theological formulations in general.Richard B

    Yes, Wittgenstein expresses a feeling that I have also always had.

    Rationality is a tool. Spirituality is another tool. They were never meant to be indiscriminately mixed.

    If you want rational answers to spiritual questions, you are doing either of both wrong. Probably even both.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    So is English.Lionino

    Yes, English is a philosophical language because it is its own metalanguage.

    That is not what the word 'philosophical' means, which goes back to my first post.Lionino

    In this post, I am trying to point out what I believe, is the correct -- or actionable -- definition for the term philosophy.

    The existing definition is known not to be usable. It is not predicable. My alternative is eminently predicable and therefore a viable alternative, unless you can point out that it would lead to glaring contradictions.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy


    If a statement can talk about other statements, then it can also talk about itself.Tarskian

    The long form:

    If it is possible to express a statement about other statements in the language at hand, then it is also possible to express statements about themselves in this language.

    A statement about another statement:

    K(#S)

    A statement about itself:

    S <-> K(#S)

    This language would only need support for the equivalence operator, i.e. the biconditional.

    But then again, I doubt that a language that does not support this operator, or cannot implement it using a detour, is capable of expressing much logic at all. In the end, the equivalence operator is just a simple truth table.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    That is called metalanguage, not philosophy.Lionino

    First-order arithmetic is its own metalanguage. It is capable of talking about its own statements.

    A language is philosophical if it is its own metalanguage.
  • Books, what for, exactly?
    your question concerns the obsolescence of books as a medium; and yes, they do seem to be becoming progressively more obsolete.kudos

    The book format used to be pretty much the only economically efficient distribution format for intellectual publications, even though the monographic article format has always been the most suitable.

    A book is an economically efficient distribution bundle of articles, i.e. chapters, that may -- or may not even --be closely related.

    With the advent of the internet, it has become equally efficient, if not more, to publish just the individual articles online. Hence, the very reason for bundling them has disappeared.

    Furthermore, quite a few alternative formats have become as popular, if not more popular than the book format.

    The ability to comment online to an article, the Q&A format, such as StackOverflow, the forum posting (like this very discussion), the various social-media formats on Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, and so on, are also increasingly eating into the market share of the venerable "Gutenberg" book format.

    The book format is simply not necessarily the best publication format in all circumstances.
  • The Most Logical Religious Path
    Spirituality, any kind of spirituality actually, tends to have a positive impact on mental health:

    https://www.webmd.com/balance/how-spirituality-affects-mental-health

    How Spirituality Affects Mental Health

    The idea of spirituality means different things for different people. The variety of spiritual beliefs and customs are as varied as the people who practice them. One thing they all have in common is the range of effects they can have on our mental health.

    Spirituality can help you deal with stress by giving you a sense of peace, purpose, and forgiveness. It often becomes more important in times of emotional stress or illness.

    You may feel a higher sense of purpose, peace, hope, and meaning.

    Mental health disorders may be treated with the help of spirituality ...

    Mental issues like depression and substance abuse can be a sign of a spiritual void in your life.

    Mental health impacts physical health and the ability to recover from physical problems:

    https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/how-does-mental-health-affect-physical-health

    Your mental health plays a huge role in your general well-being. Being in a good mental state can keep you healthy and help prevent serious health conditions. A study found that positive psychological well-being can reduce the risks of heart attacks and strokes.

    Mental health conditions can also make dealing with a chronic illness more difficult. The mortality rate from cancer and heart disease is higher among people with depression or other mental health conditions.

    But then again, I did not say that it works for everybody. In my opinion, you need to be sufficiently deeply invested in spirituality for it to work. I just assume that if people don't believe that it will work, that it indeed will not.

    I also don't think that it is possible to objectively measure faith, hope, or the will to survive. So, I do not trust any figures on the subject.
  • The Most Logical Religious Path
    Saying nonsense again, aren't we?Lionino

    I believe that religion gives hope, but I also believe that it only works for people who believe that it works.

    It gives hope to people who may otherwise be completely hopeless.

    Hope is what you need when you are very sick and even fighting for your life, because otherwise you may not even really fight.

    https://www.psychiatrist.com/pcc/dealing-with-a-patient-who-has-given-up/

    Psychotherapy Casebook
    Dealing With a Patient Who Has Given Up

    He sees no purpose in getting treatment for cancer and has declined chemotherapy. He thinks about the future and sees little that encourages him. When he gets these discouraging thoughts, he often dwells on them and sometimes extends them.

    I have told him that this is usually not a winning strategy. We all get thoughts, but some of us are able to divert our thinking in a direction that is more reasonable. I suggested that he try to do this.

    We made another appointment to meet and talk in 2 weeks. It is his right to decline treatment for a major medical problem. I have no right to impose a strategy on him. Perhaps the power inherent in establishing a relationship will result in his forming a reason for living.

    People find meaning in religion and therefore meaning in life itself, and hence, a reason for living. Spirituality diverts our thinking in a direction that is more reasonable. You may not believe it. It may not work for you, but it works for lots of other people.
  • The Most Logical Religious Path
    The main threat to religion is good healthcare.frank

    It is probably the other way around. The main threat to good healthcare is the lack of religion. If you are not motivated, if you are depressed, if you are in fact in your own mind already a lost case, the best healthcare in the world won't make a difference. The doctor will simply say, "The patient is not fighting. He has given up already." You need motivation to succeed. You need it even when trying to get better. Good healthcare is simply wasted on people who actually don't want to live.
  • The game theory against divorces
    Sorry, I am not a native English speaker and I don't understand the word "simping". Maybe you wanted to say that the husband and wife become "Sims" with my approach? One more person told me so, but I don't understand this argument.Linkey

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simp

    Simp (/sɪmp/ ⓘ) is an internet slang term describing someone who shows excessive sympathy and attention toward another person, typically to someone who does not reciprocate the same feelings, in pursuit of affection or a sexual relationship.[1][2] This behavior, known as simping,[3] is carried out toward a variety of targets, including celebrities,[1] politicians,[4][5] e-girls, and e-boys.[6] The term had sporadic usage until gaining traction on social media in 2019.[7]

    Simping for a woman, never helps.

    If she is attracted to you, you can pretty much do or not do whatever you want, because she will simply invent her own reasons why she likes it. For example, if she is attracted to you, she will laugh at your jokes even when they are not funny.

    If she is not attracted to you, however, you can try to give her whatever you want to change that, but it won't help, because attraction is "not negotiable". So, don't waste your time. Just move on. Find other and better.

    In fact, women tend to be attracted to you, if they can see that you have more options than them. So, instead of simping for a particular woman, just ignore her, and interact with other women that are younger and/or prettier than her. If she doesn't care, then hit it off with the other woman. If she does care, you can choose her, the other woman, or both.
  • Does physics describe logic?
    My point was simply that I think 'Physics' as a discipline has still a 'raison d'etre' if 'a theory of everything' is impossible to achieve. I myself worked briefly in condensed matter physics, a branch of physics that is quite independent to the search of a 'theory of everything'. To some physicists might be essential, maybe even famous ones, but this does not mean that physics becomes vain if a 'theory of everything' is impossible. There still much to be discovered about physical phenomena that can be 'modeled' with current theories.boundless

    Indeed, physics has its merits. I don't think anybody denies that. I was just pointing out what some of its problems are, and how these problems relate to mathematical logic.
  • The game theory against divorces
    I suppose that the modern sciences as the ethology and the game theory and can reduce the number of divorces in our society. The reason for this is that many divorces are caused by the everyday egoism of spouses, and the modern sciences (their philosophycal aspect) promote a more critical attitude towards egoism.Linkey

    Reducing divorce by getting husbands to simp even harder? If simping harder were the solution, there would be no divorces to begin with. In fact, the opposite is much more likely to be true. As a man, you can reduce the likelihood of divorce by simping less. But then again, why sign a contract in which you are at the mercy of someone else who can just break it and then cash out on you? It is the modern incentive structure of the contract that explains why it gets broken so easily and so often. Therefore, the only way to avoid divorce is not to sign that kind of unreasonable contracts.
  • Does physics describe logic?
    So you shit on both sides of this divide? What intellectually does meet with your full approval?apokrisis

    First of all, I am fascinated by disaster tourism. I would like to take a tour of Chernobyl reactor number four.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant_sarcophagus

    The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant sarcophagus or Shelter Structure (Ukrainian: Об'єкт "Укриття") is a massive steel and concrete structure covering the nuclear reactor number 4 building of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The sarcophagus resides inside the New Safe Confinement structure.

    My hobby would be to compare it to the open-air molten cores of the six Fukushima reactors and try to find similarities.

    Secondly, I don't trust a tool until I understand its limitations. That is why you have to crash test it thoroughly.

    That is why I find the foundational crisis in mathematics an exhilarating subject. I try to devour all the literature. Show me something else that goes wrong! Is it that bad?

    "Mathematics proper" is fiendishly boring in comparison.

    Thirdly, most programmers hate bugs. I love them. They always called me for those, because I was apparently the only one who liked working on them. There is nothing more fun than a complete mess.

    Last but not least, the foundational crisis in mathematics says a lot about the universe itself, which is itself obviously also a complete mess. The metaphysical implications of the crisis are utmost fascinating.

    I don't like beautiful theories. They are boring. I don't trust smooth talkers. If it is too good to be true, then it undoubtedly is.
  • Does physics describe logic?
    And is maths itself organised in any grand cube of theories? Is everything slotted together under some grand unifying project like category theory or the Langland’s program?apokrisis

    Mathematics has a massive foundational crisis with insurmountable issues.