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 Author Thread: Philosophers and Great Minds Becoming Endangered Species???
 loverofwisdom

Joined: 1/24/2004
Msg: 76
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Philosophers and Great Minds Becoming Endangered Species???
Posted: 7/1/2008 9:25:41 AM

As for your comments on Parmenides, well I think this is where we get into a chain of infinite regression. We are bound to find echoes of all kinds of things in the presocratics, and further echoes probably exist before them. But if you do a web search right now for the Principle of Non Contradiction which has many formulations in the Aristotelian corpus, even beyond those offered in the Metaphysics, you'll find that the principle has been attributed by scholars and classicists to Aristotle.


Do that same web search but throw in the word "Parmenides" and you'll find a number of folks who attribute the principle to him as well. This was all a side note anyway. Parmenides poem is quite obscure and I don't think I'd get much out of it unless I read a lot of secondary literature on it. (The only thing I really have read was a paper by Anscombe which was interesting to say that least.) I will agree that Aristotle gave a pretty clear formulation of it.


Again, it would be unusual for him to use the kinds of operators we would typically use today, i.e., -(p&-p) etc But these operators often simply reflect what is in the surface or deeper meaning of our utterances. Aristotle was obviously dealing with principles in long hand, but many of them 'convert'...look up some of the many other formulations available. A number of times he says the linguistic equivalent of it cannot be the case that p and not p are simultaneously true


I certainly don't have a problem with the operators having "deeper meanings" but then we're not dealing with them "formally". There isn't a whole lot of "deep meaning" in the formalization.


Descartes' arguments in his Meditations in first philosophy can pretty easily be reduced down to a series of Aristotelian syllogisms.


Now that I'd like to see. You have a journal reference?

I would suggest, however, that he wasn't using it. His argument was pretty informal. The main purpose of formalization is to ensure that there aren't unstated assumptions or leaps of reasoning. That was Hilbert's program for mathematics.

I had heard that someone actually did a dissertation codifying Hegel's book on logic into contemporary predicate logic. I actually haven't read the book, but the professor who brought it up suggested it wasn't any good.

I've heard the same of Spinoza's Ethics but there are far too many leaps in reasoning in that piece...
 kirk763

Joined: 3/17/2008
Msg: 77
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Philosophers and Great Minds Becoming Endangered Species???
Posted: 7/1/2008 9:43:45 AM
I think another problem here is hermeneutic hindsight or anachronistic analysis. It is wrongheaded to examine Aristotle's invention of formal logic according to the strictures of a pragmatic reason that is extremely new. The question is to whether or not he set things on their way...2,500 years before some of the developments you have been keen to champion have been established. Now it further seems to me that it is not inaccurate to ascribe to Aristotle's formulations (at least two of them) the belief that -(p&-p) is what he was articulating in longhand, so to speak.


I would suggest, however, that he wasn't using it. His argument was pretty informal.


As for the Meditations question. I've taught them often enough to have many of the arguments broken into syllogisms...throw in Leibniz's princple of the indiscernability of identicals there and you have a reasonably tidy collection of clever, if fallacious arguments.
Arguments from divisibility, conceivability and so on...they are straightforward syllogisms when you tidy them up.

The main purpose of formalization is to ensure that there aren't unstated assumptions or leaps of reasoning. That was Hilbert's program for mathematics.[/quoted]
I would consider that 'objective' to be central to the philosophical work of all analytic philosophers.

While, more generally, the attempt to avoid unstated or unwarranted assumptions or leaps of reasoning, well that's possibly best illustrated in Plato's Socratic dialogues...


I had heard that someone actually did a dissertation codifying Hegel's book on logic into contemporary predicate logic. I actually haven't read the book, but the professor who brought it up suggested it wasn't any good.


That makes about as much sense as Ryle (I think it was Ryle, he did write an ambivalent review of Being and Time) scribbling a few lines from Being and Time on the board and dismissing Heidegger's meisterwerk as nonsensical and illogical. Don't know why one would bother, Hegel's enough of a pain in plain German...
 The philosophygirl

Joined: 6/3/2006
Msg: 78
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Philosophers and Great Minds Becoming Endangered Species???
Posted: 7/2/2008 12:14:22 PM
I do not think that great minds are becomming endangered. Although there does seem to be a dumbing-down of culture, with so much the influence of pop-culture and materialism, I do not think that there is any shortage of intelligent people, even great thinkers of the 21st century. All one has to do do is go to any Boreder's bookstore and walk down the aisles and one will see many books written by people of various backgrounds, supposedly experts in their fields. Walk through the science aisle and you will see scores of books written by authors from the reknown to the not so reknown. Richard Dawkins certainly crosses my mind when I think of a great mind. Stephen Hawkings, reknown physicist is also another one.

Walk through another aisle, such as philosophy or social studies. Another person who comes to mind is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, A Somali woman who escaped an arranged marriage to becomming a member of the Dutch parliment, later collaborrating with the Late Theo Van Goh in the making of the film "Submiision" to her exile after his murder to becomming a best-selling author and critic of human-rights abuses in some Muslim countries is a person that I really respect. Sam Harris, modern day philosopher is some whom I also think of when I think of the Great Minds that are alive today.

Of course, not everyone who writes abook or has fame is or should be considered a great mind. The question that should be asked if what he or she writes or think makes sense? Is there any reasonableness to what they write? Are they objective? Some books are better written than others. But, there is plenty of thinking going on today, and more so than ever before in the history of humankind. There is alot more thinking taking place and alot less of it too in some ways.
 Chocolatebrowne

Joined: 1/19/2006
Msg: 79
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Philosophers and Great Minds Becoming Endangered Species???
Posted: 8/20/2008 8:20:02 AM
YES! America is becoming so "dumbed down" it's pathetic!

Even some college graduates of today don't think, write, or speak much better than the high school graduates of "my generation", and (after spending all that money, it is SAD)
 wicked_desires

Joined: 7/7/2008
Msg: 80
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Philosophers and Great Minds Becoming Endangered Species???
Posted: 8/20/2008 10:02:57 PM
merely a benchmark
Whilst great - Plato Aristotle and that other dude...seems to me they did an awful lot of reference to the for runners work. And the fore runner himself referenced others (not of fame or renown)


so i don't agree with specific cultures, though as far is history records perhaps a little bias? re the "first" writings/uni .....call it what you will..whilst other writings and teachings past and present are overlooked for reference sake..

great minds always shine through, often later, rather than sooner :(

erm yes lot of discouragement out there and the need to conform or quote or some rot
 sherdredd2

Joined: 11/14/2007
Msg: 81
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Philosophers and Great Minds Becoming Endangered Species???
Posted: 8/21/2008 5:45:24 AM
"So yes I do think Philosophers are an endangered species."
The problem is that things have become so specialized and in some cases mathematical
that its nearly impossible for the lay person to run across the "great minds" of today.
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman work on heuristics is far more important to philosophy than some post modernist professor who is really writing about a bunch of bullshit. Its just such a specialized and cross discipline subset that its hard to run across work like this.
Probly an even a better example is John Nash. A Beautiful Mind was a hugely successful movie but its pretty impossible to understand Nash without an advanced mathematics background.
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