1. The Right of Nature.
2. Law of Nature (17th Century Political and Social Philosophy and Social Contract Theory.)
3. Evolutionary Debunking Arguments - Alvin Plantinga's The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism Analysis and Study Guide
Friday 29 November 2013
Encyclopedia Philaxiom
The Encyclopedia Philaxiom is a free philosophy and philosophy of science reference resource. Entries range from encyclopedic to glossarial, and are useful as study notes and for getting an understanding of key concepts and relevant sources quickly and easily. The encyclopedia is connected to the philaxiom.info high speed search facility, allowing keyword and phrase searching on the encyclopedia's database.
Wednesday 20 November 2013
Nature of information Poll results...
The results of the poll about the nature of information are in. Ontic cafe will run a longer poll within the next day or so. Also look out for an article about the information density of fractals. The next article in the series about whether evolution of the genome and protein synthesis obeys informational laws is also due in the next two days.
One preliminary note about the results of the poll is that there is little to indicate that subjectivism or pluralism are intuitively or perhaps otherwise pre-eminent positions. This is somewhat surprising as pluralism is the position of leading philosophers, and subjectivism has also often been a popular position.
So the previous poll results were as follows:
Change your vote
The Poll has been relaunched.
One preliminary note about the results of the poll is that there is little to indicate that subjectivism or pluralism are intuitively or perhaps otherwise pre-eminent positions. This is somewhat surprising as pluralism is the position of leading philosophers, and subjectivism has also often been a popular position.
So the previous poll results were as follows:
Does information exist apart from perceiving agents (without some thinking organism to perceive it)?
25 (69%)
|
8 (22%)
|
4 (11%)
|
0 (0%)
|
3 (8%)
|
0 (0%)
|
Change your vote
Votes so far: 36
Days left to vote: 21
Days left to vote: 21
The Poll has been relaunched.
Friday 15 November 2013
Thursday 14 November 2013
Questions or comments about the poll (Does information exist apart from perceiving agents...)
If you have any queries or comments about the above poll, please feel free to post them here...
Are There Informational Laws of Genome Evolution? – Part One: Information and Molecular Bioscience
Ontic Cafe Four Beans Difficulty (Detailed but written to be accessible to laypersons)
This post is the first of two. The material is from a quite complex field of the philosophy of biology and information theory in biology. It would normally be at least 5 Ontic Café Beans, but I have watered it down to about three. Nonacademic philosophers should be able to get a reasonable idea what is going on and benefit from an introduction to one of the hottest topics in the philosophy of information and biology.
Different Conceptions of Information
Let’s start with a rapid introduction to the philosophy of information.
There are several conceptions of the nature of information – of what information
actually is. These conceptions vary dramatically in their details and
ontological commitments – the things that are taken to be necessary to have for
there to exist some information (in philosophical language we day “the
necessary conditions” for information to exist.) Here a couple of quick
examples will be instructive.
The most common understanding, and the most common scientific
one, is that of quantitative information theories. In these theories one has
information on a statistical or probabilistic basis. According to these conceptions
information exists when there is a reduction in uncertainty about what is
happening at an information source. An information source is any physical process
that can be modeled statistically – about which you can say there is a certain probability
of the next state of the source based on the current one. A simple example is
you reading this sentence. Each word makes the next word more or less likely
because of the structure of the English language and the rules (grammar and
meaning) for making English sentences. The source is the text you are reading. This
is the very example most used by the founder of modern quantitative information
theory – mathematician Claude E. Shannon (The Mathematical Theory of
Communication, 1948.)
The main alternatives to quantitative statistical theories
are algorithmic theories. These involve measuring the complexity of strings of
symbols or what are called data objects. Any sequence of elements can be a data
object. The longer and more complex the data object – the more information it
has. The most famous is that developed
by Russian materialist mathematician Andre Kolmogorov. In Kolmogorov’s
theory the amount of information in a data object is given by the length of the
program or description required to generate or construct the data object.
Semantic Information
Quantitative statistical measure based conceptions and
definitions of information have often been seen as inadequate because as Claude
Shannon himself wrote in The Mathematical Theory of Communication, they do not
attempt to capture any meaning of the symbols that are transmitted. His
predecessor R.V.L Hartley wrote that ``[i]t is desireable therefore to
eliminate the psychological factors involved and to establish a measure of
information in terms of purely physical quantities'' (Transmission of Information, 1928, 536.)
Shannon’s peer and mentor Warren Weaver first observed that
in future it would be desirable to formulate a conception of information that accounted
for meaning. Later theorists came to refer to such conceptions as theories of
semantic information. There have been
several of these – mostly naturalistic – offered by both mathematicians and
philosophers. The first notable attempt was by the famous Vienna circle
mathematician and philosopher Rudolph Carnap. Carnap joined with mathematician
Yehoshua Bar-Hillel to formulate a theory of semantic information in which the semantic
information content of a sentence was determined according a to a logical
formulation (1953.) In lay terms the information content of a sentence is the
set of all sentences that are false if that sentence is true.
Later various other conceptions of semantic information. Philosopher Fred Dretske adapted elements of
Shannon’s theory (1981 – Knowledge and the Flow of Information.) Mathematician
Keith Devlin produced another logical conception (1995- Logic of Information.)
More recently, Luciano Floridi has produced a theory of semantic information
that extends and adapts ideas put forward by Devlin and Bar-Hillel and Carnap.
It is different in that it requires information to have alethic value – to be
based upon data which are truthful according to certain fairly complex criteria
(Floridi, Information in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and
Information - 2004, Information – A Very
Short Introduction - 2011, The
Philosophy of Information - 2012.)
The idea of semantic theories of information is that
information and meaning are directly related somehow. Usually meaning is
thought to involve truth value of some kind.
Meanwhile in Physics and Biology
An enormous part of the story of our understanding of the nature
of information comes from physics. I will not say much about that here, except
to say that physicists often regard information to be a physical thing. Another
pioneer of information theory – the father of Cybernetics Norbert Weiner – once
said that “information is information, not matter or energy...no materialism
that does not admit this can survive...'' (1962, Cybernetics: or Control and
Communication in the Animal and the Machine.) No physicist has claimed that information
is matter or energy, but quantum computing pioneer Rolf Landauer was sure that it is physical (Information
is a Physical Entity, 1996.)
An enormous amount of philosophical and technical thought
about information comes from biology. This is not so surprising
given the importance of the concept of information to genetics and DNA science.
Inherited traits from one generation to the next of phenotypes (organisms) are
described in terms of information. So is what is referred to as the central
dogma of molecular biology: that information cannot go from the phenotype (the
developed body) to the genotype (the gene/DNA.) In other words, if I cut my
hand it will not mean that any child conceived by me in the future will have
the same cut on their hand. More recently the central dogma has come under
challenge from the field of epigenetics. In epigenetics, other things in
addition to the gene – the DNA itself – are thought to contribute heritable
information or information that is passed from one generation to the next. This
can include processes within the cytoplasm of the cell, or even things in the
organisms environment like the structure of nests in which young are reared. Still - it is often information transmission that is of interest.
At least since Crick and Watson’s discovery of the double
helix structure of DNA in 1971, biologists and philosophers of biology have been
contemplating and arguing about the nature of information and information
transfer in DNA and biosynthetic processes. Biosynthetic processes are
processes in which smaller molecules are combined to form more complex
molecules that have some more complex function (processes involving such things
as the manufacture of protein and other biological structures from genetic
material.) Such processes are frequently
described in terms of information.
Codes, encoding, transmission, and even information compression
have been discussed as real in the processes of genetic material.
This all raises a question, however. We saw in the previous section
that there are many conceptions of information. So which is the right one for
biology? Molecular bioscientists and philosophers of biology are still trying
to figure that out. There are even arguments about whether genetic information is semantic or not - if it has meaning and if so in what way (See recent work by Nicholas Shea on what he calls Infotel semantics. The idea is that the meaning of genetic information is determined by its function.) Some philosophers of biology even have what is known as an
eliminative conception of information in biology: they eliminate it from the
discussion completely or partly as a useless metaphor that is confusing and
does not explain anything real (See Griffiths, Paul E. Genetic Information – A Metaphor
in Search of a Theory http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/89/1/Genetic_Information_etc.pdf.)
Are There Informational Laws in Genome Evolution and the Evolution of Protein Synthesis?
This entire area of the nature of information in molecular
bioscience is complex and keenly debated. However, in this two part series I am
interested in a very specific part of the debate – one that is perhaps the most
exciting and relevant to philosophy in general and not a little evolutionary
science today. It involves the question of how protein synthesis evolved by
natural selection. The process of protein synthesis is an incredibly complex
biosynthetic process that has only recently come to be well understood. The
complexity of the processes of protein folding and gene splicing meant that the
details of these processes were wholly mysterious up until recently. How such
processes came to evolve naturally to their current state is an even more
challenging mystery.
Above is an artist's representation of the proces of protein synthesis from DNA via processes of DNA transcription and translation into a chain of amino acids and finally into a folded protein. The process is staggeringly complex, with only the most basic fundamental steps represented here. Molecular bioscientists usually take it for granted that there is information transmitted form the DNA to the protein. A much larger question, however, is how the information of the entire process and the structures involved in it came to be as it is by evolutionary processes. Eugene V. Koonin has proposed that "Although a complete physical theory of evolutionary biology is inconceivable, the universals of genome evolution might qualify as “laws of evolutionary genomics” in the same sense “law” is understood in modern physics." (http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1002173) The details of this theory involve the laws being expressed largely as statistical and informational.
Tuesday 12 November 2013
Free philosophy help from a University philosophy tutor and postgraduate researcher specialising in philosophy...
Mostly analytic philosophy - but ask anything. A current tutor in philosophy at The University of Sydney and past logic tutor at Macquarie University is ready to answer your philosophy and logic questions! Their PhD Thesis is in analytic philosophy, the philosophy of information, and the philosophy of mathematics. Interactive discussions possible depending upon demand and at the tutor's discretion.
(Attention limited based upon demand and at tutor's discretion.)
Philosophy Tutorials and Philosophy Humour On line. Free!
Feel free to post questions about any of the content. Free philosophy tutorial advice for undergraduates in analytic philosophy. Having trouble with that term paper? Post questions about philosophy topics.
Monday 11 November 2013
Superluminal Information Transmission
By Bruce Long (B App Sc, BA Hons 1, MPhil, PhD candidate.)
Ontic Cafe 4 beans difficulty rating:
The philosophy of physics is all abuzz lately - on top of its usual buzz. The popularization of the failures of string theory and the work of science popularisers like Lawrence Krauss, Peter Woit, John Gribbin, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson have co-incided with a mounting interest in metaphysics and the philosophy of physics among physicists and philosophers alike.
Spooky Action At A Distance
When Einstein produced his theory of special relativity and work on quantum mechanics, he made a disturbing discovery - what he called "spooky action at a distance". Einstein's Spooky action at a distance is better known among physicists as non-local effects or quantum entanglement.
What is entanglement and what does it have to do with information transmission? Information transmission depends upon cause and effect. If you can make cause and effect happen instantaneously, then arguably so does information transmission.
Briefly, Einstein's theory predicted that two quantum systems (very small systems) like photons or electrons or other particles would affect each other's states instantaneously even if they we separated by large distances. The systems (particles) start out together in the same place in space and time, and then can become widely separated. After they are separated by a significant non-trivial distance - a measurement of one that changes its state will necessarily result in an instantaneous change in the state of the other in the opposite direction (quantum particles have different rates of spin and what is called angular momentum, and there is a direction of that spin - usually up or down.) If one particle is spin up, and you measure it and it becomes spin down - then the other particle will do the opposite even if has traveled a long way off. Instantaneously - with no delay at all. Spooky, said Einstein.
Now, instantaneously here literally means instantaneously. Not at the speed of light, or near it, but much much faster. In fact - speed or velocity is not even the right thing to talk about. The cause-effect of entanglement or non-local effects is immediate. It would be like the pitcher throwing the baseball, while the batter hits exactly the same ball at exactly the same time - and the pitcher is on Earth and the batter on the moon.
There is theoretically and practically no speed - just instantaneous change of the state of one physical system based upon the change in the state of the other (usually when the other system is physically measured.) It's almost like if a fan watches the baseball pitcher, then the action at a distance will automatically happen. If the pitcher is pitching, you know the batter is batting at that moment - with the same ball. If the fan goes and hands the pitcher a bat, there is extremely high likelihood (virtual certainty) that the distant batter will have become a pitcher at that exact same moment. It is THAT weird.
Einstein did not like spooky action at a distance at all because it suggested that the usual understanding of cause and effect and causal chains in physics was largely wrong for quantum mechanics. Either something was wrong with the mathematics, said Einstein, or there was something very weird going on in the universe. He came to the conclusion that there must be intermediate causal structures between the entangled quantum systems that had not been detected physically yet. This theory is called hidden local variable or local realism theory. The realism means that there is really something there doing the entangling, and local means that spooky action at a distance just does not happen but instead there is a hidden intermediate causal structure that is local to the quantum systems.
A Speed for Entanglement After All
Now many readers will be aware of Einstein's maxim that no body without zero rest mass (no mass when not moving relative to any spatiotemporal frame of reference) can move faster than the speed of light. That's an immutable law of the universe - right? Well - maybe. It is action at a distance. Einstein's hidden local variables have not been found - and in fact the theory has turned out to be unsupported by empirical experimental findings.
Recently some Chinese physicists have tried to measure the speed of non-local effects (refer to the list of reference at Physics News.) I have just said that there is no speed involved - so what is this experiment about? Well, their findings don't provide much comfort. What they proved experimentally - assuming no discovery of errors in the future - is that if there is a speed of entanglement then it has to be at least 10 000 times the speed of light. They do not know if it is the limitations of their equipment that is causing the measurement value. The speed might be even higher - or no speed at all as suggested above.
Bell Theorems- Is Spooky Action at a Distance Real? Or are there hidden local intermediate causal structures?
The theoretical physicist John Bell made things even worse for Einstein in 1964 with a theory that suggested that the mathematical predictions of quantum mechanics did not fit with the mathematical theory of hidden local variables that he himself had developed.
Things got worse still for the hidden local variable theory when Bell's findings were supported by experiment in 1972 by John Clauser and Stuart Freeman. Alain Aspect did it again with experiments in 1981.
What Now - Superluminal Information Transfer?
In the best mathematical and scientific theories of information, information transmission involves loss due to signal noise and is limited by the transmission rates permitted by the transmission medium. Some information theorists assert that information transfer is only about the covariance - the simultaneous changing - of one structure with another in such a way that the state of one system (an information receiver) tells one something about the state of the other (the information source) with a certain degree of probability.
Now, normally entanglement is not regarded by physicists as an information channel on a statistical basis since there is no uncertainty about the state of one system if the state of the other is known. For statistical formal measures of information one requires statistical uncertainty - because according to those measures information just is a reduction in uncertainty or an increase in probability about the next state of the source based on the current state, or else based upon signals received that were caused by the current state. (See John Gray's text Information Theory and Entropy: http://ee.stanford.edu/~gray/it.pdf ; See also Warren Weaver's introduction to Claude E Shannon's The Mathematical Theory of communcation.)
I will put aside this consideration of the statistical conception of information as an impediment to quantum entanglement channels for information transmission. This is because the statistical conception is only one (albeit very important) element of the transmission of information, and only one conception of information transfer.
Whither the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Entropy defeated?
Ontic Cafe 4 beans difficulty rating:
The philosophy of physics is all abuzz lately - on top of its usual buzz. The popularization of the failures of string theory and the work of science popularisers like Lawrence Krauss, Peter Woit, John Gribbin, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson have co-incided with a mounting interest in metaphysics and the philosophy of physics among physicists and philosophers alike.
Spooky Action At A Distance
When Einstein produced his theory of special relativity and work on quantum mechanics, he made a disturbing discovery - what he called "spooky action at a distance". Einstein's Spooky action at a distance is better known among physicists as non-local effects or quantum entanglement.
What is entanglement and what does it have to do with information transmission? Information transmission depends upon cause and effect. If you can make cause and effect happen instantaneously, then arguably so does information transmission.
Briefly, Einstein's theory predicted that two quantum systems (very small systems) like photons or electrons or other particles would affect each other's states instantaneously even if they we separated by large distances. The systems (particles) start out together in the same place in space and time, and then can become widely separated. After they are separated by a significant non-trivial distance - a measurement of one that changes its state will necessarily result in an instantaneous change in the state of the other in the opposite direction (quantum particles have different rates of spin and what is called angular momentum, and there is a direction of that spin - usually up or down.) If one particle is spin up, and you measure it and it becomes spin down - then the other particle will do the opposite even if has traveled a long way off. Instantaneously - with no delay at all. Spooky, said Einstein.
Now, instantaneously here literally means instantaneously. Not at the speed of light, or near it, but much much faster. In fact - speed or velocity is not even the right thing to talk about. The cause-effect of entanglement or non-local effects is immediate. It would be like the pitcher throwing the baseball, while the batter hits exactly the same ball at exactly the same time - and the pitcher is on Earth and the batter on the moon.
There is theoretically and practically no speed - just instantaneous change of the state of one physical system based upon the change in the state of the other (usually when the other system is physically measured.) It's almost like if a fan watches the baseball pitcher, then the action at a distance will automatically happen. If the pitcher is pitching, you know the batter is batting at that moment - with the same ball. If the fan goes and hands the pitcher a bat, there is extremely high likelihood (virtual certainty) that the distant batter will have become a pitcher at that exact same moment. It is THAT weird.
Einstein did not like spooky action at a distance at all because it suggested that the usual understanding of cause and effect and causal chains in physics was largely wrong for quantum mechanics. Either something was wrong with the mathematics, said Einstein, or there was something very weird going on in the universe. He came to the conclusion that there must be intermediate causal structures between the entangled quantum systems that had not been detected physically yet. This theory is called hidden local variable or local realism theory. The realism means that there is really something there doing the entangling, and local means that spooky action at a distance just does not happen but instead there is a hidden intermediate causal structure that is local to the quantum systems.
A Speed for Entanglement After All
Now many readers will be aware of Einstein's maxim that no body without zero rest mass (no mass when not moving relative to any spatiotemporal frame of reference) can move faster than the speed of light. That's an immutable law of the universe - right? Well - maybe. It is action at a distance. Einstein's hidden local variables have not been found - and in fact the theory has turned out to be unsupported by empirical experimental findings.
Recently some Chinese physicists have tried to measure the speed of non-local effects (refer to the list of reference at Physics News.) I have just said that there is no speed involved - so what is this experiment about? Well, their findings don't provide much comfort. What they proved experimentally - assuming no discovery of errors in the future - is that if there is a speed of entanglement then it has to be at least 10 000 times the speed of light. They do not know if it is the limitations of their equipment that is causing the measurement value. The speed might be even higher - or no speed at all as suggested above.
Bell Theorems- Is Spooky Action at a Distance Real? Or are there hidden local intermediate causal structures?
The theoretical physicist John Bell made things even worse for Einstein in 1964 with a theory that suggested that the mathematical predictions of quantum mechanics did not fit with the mathematical theory of hidden local variables that he himself had developed.
Things got worse still for the hidden local variable theory when Bell's findings were supported by experiment in 1972 by John Clauser and Stuart Freeman. Alain Aspect did it again with experiments in 1981.
What Now - Superluminal Information Transfer?
In the best mathematical and scientific theories of information, information transmission involves loss due to signal noise and is limited by the transmission rates permitted by the transmission medium. Some information theorists assert that information transfer is only about the covariance - the simultaneous changing - of one structure with another in such a way that the state of one system (an information receiver) tells one something about the state of the other (the information source) with a certain degree of probability.
Now, normally entanglement is not regarded by physicists as an information channel on a statistical basis since there is no uncertainty about the state of one system if the state of the other is known. For statistical formal measures of information one requires statistical uncertainty - because according to those measures information just is a reduction in uncertainty or an increase in probability about the next state of the source based on the current state, or else based upon signals received that were caused by the current state. (See John Gray's text Information Theory and Entropy: http://ee.stanford.edu/~gray/it.pdf ; See also Warren Weaver's introduction to Claude E Shannon's The Mathematical Theory of communcation.)
I will put aside this consideration of the statistical conception of information as an impediment to quantum entanglement channels for information transmission. This is because the statistical conception is only one (albeit very important) element of the transmission of information, and only one conception of information transfer.
Whither the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Entropy defeated?
The point is that if entanglement is a real physical causality - if it really involves some kind of instant physical cause effect interaction, then that means that information can be transferred instantaneously. If that is true, then many things are unclear. Because of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, causality is limited in a causally closed universe. Energy loss and impedance limit transmission speeds in predictable ways.
However, if non-local quantum information transmission is true, then it looks very much like we might be able to send information without any signal loss at all. Even weirder - information might be transmissable with no intermediate causal pathway or structure. This is spooky indeed.
References:
References:
J. S. Bell, (1966) On the problem of hidden variables in quantum mechanics, Rev. Mod. Phys. 38, 447.
PHILAXIOM.INFO - The Philosophy of Information, The Philosophy of Information in Biology, The Philosophy of Mathematics, The Philosophy of Physics
Interested in the philosophy of information and information theory? Visit philaxiom.info.
The Desert of the Real?
Ontic Cafe One Bean Difficulty:
When the model becomes more real than the reality.
In the cult science fiction movie The Matrix, the character Morpheus reveals to the tale's main protagonist - the cyber culture hero Neo - that his entire life has been a hallucination sustained by an enormous supercomputer run by machines that have long since destroyed the real world of which Neo thought he was a denizen.
The science fiction novums and tropes are thick on the ground in The Matrix, but the desert of the real is arguably a special concept with special relevance for the Internet age - especially the commercialised Internet age.
The idea of the desert of the real was introduced by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. He used a portion of a tail by Jorge Luis Borges in which the leaders of an empire commission the creation of a map that is the same size as the empire and covers it. The map eventually becomes unpopular and disintegrates.
Baudrillard draws parallels between the concept of the map and the media, government, and even science as conducive to the building of models or simulations of the world that become what he calls hyperreal. They are simulations and models that become simulacra, hyperreal misrepresentations that are conducive to dissimulation (pretending that there is no simluation):
Like most continental philosophers, Baudrillard was partial to the odd bit of sophistic word salad:
Although as far as anyone knows there has been no technological singularity (the term coined by computer scientist and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge that denotes the point at which the computers become intelligent and the AI is smarter than us) - perhaps the machines of the Matrix are already with us.
(Return to Ontic Cafe Home)
When the model becomes more real than the reality.
In the cult science fiction movie The Matrix, the character Morpheus reveals to the tale's main protagonist - the cyber culture hero Neo - that his entire life has been a hallucination sustained by an enormous supercomputer run by machines that have long since destroyed the real world of which Neo thought he was a denizen.
The science fiction novums and tropes are thick on the ground in The Matrix, but the desert of the real is arguably a special concept with special relevance for the Internet age - especially the commercialised Internet age.
The idea of the desert of the real was introduced by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. He used a portion of a tail by Jorge Luis Borges in which the leaders of an empire commission the creation of a map that is the same size as the empire and covers it. The map eventually becomes unpopular and disintegrates.
Baudrillard draws parallels between the concept of the map and the media, government, and even science as conducive to the building of models or simulations of the world that become what he calls hyperreal. They are simulations and models that become simulacra, hyperreal misrepresentations that are conducive to dissimulation (pretending that there is no simluation):
Today abstraction is no longer that of the map…Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory – precession of simulacra – that engenders the territory...(Baudrillard, J., ―The Precession of Simulacra‖ in Simulacra and Simulation, Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser, Ann Arbor: the University of Michigan Press, 1994., 1)The desert of the real is the replacement of the real territory with that of the simulated territory, where the territory is all aspects of life.
Like most continental philosophers, Baudrillard was partial to the odd bit of sophistic word salad:
Simulacra of simulation, founded on information, the model, the cybernetic game – total operationality, hyperreality, aim of total control...It is not clear how cybernetics has any bearing here. However, Baudrillard's point is that the media and technology - and science and science fiction writing - all come to be subsumed under the aim of control.
Although as far as anyone knows there has been no technological singularity (the term coined by computer scientist and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge that denotes the point at which the computers become intelligent and the AI is smarter than us) - perhaps the machines of the Matrix are already with us.
(Return to Ontic Cafe Home)
Ontic Cafe Philosophy Short Shot #4 What are numbers? Part 1
The philosophy of mathematics is an enormous sub discipline in philosophy, and is one of the most interesting and unique fields of philosophical endeavour. Often the philosophy of mathematics involves an understanding of quite sophisticate mathematics, but in this Ontic Cafe Short Shot there is no mathematics.
(Return to Ontic Cafe Home.)
Philosophers, Stimulants, and Relaxants.
Do tell. We know that David Hume liked to frequent coffee shops. There were other enlightenment thinkers that did likewise. If you know a good coffee shop tale involving a philosopher - or even a drinking tale, please regale us!
(Return to Ontic Cafe Home.)
A Metaphorical Coffee Shop
Why a coffee shop theme for a philosophy website and blog?
Philosophers often need coffee to stay awake, but there is no actual coffee to be had here at Ontic Cafe. Anyway, some philosophers prefer a nice red or some of the stiffer varieties of relaxant, rather than a stimulant. The reason for the theme is a historical context.
David Hume, one of the three great empiricist philosophers (John Locke, and George Berkeley being the others), and arguably the most important, never held an academic posting. By the time he began applying for such positions he had already published his work A Treatise Concerning Human Nature (called 'The Treatise'.)
The work was monumental and brilliant and regarded as Hume's greatest, but it attracted the ire of zealots and repressive religionists due to Hume's apparent atheism and disdain for religious enthusiasm. His career in academia was sabotaged and politically stymied from that point onwards.
Hume famously wrote an anonymous article called An Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature to promote his work, and this article served as something of a precis to Hume's Later An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
During his brilliant but troubled career, Hume was a frequenter of coffee houses in Edinburgh and La Flèche in France where he lived for a time to save costs, and where he famously taunted the Jesuits with his writings.
(Return to Ontic Cafe Home.)
Philosophers often need coffee to stay awake, but there is no actual coffee to be had here at Ontic Cafe. Anyway, some philosophers prefer a nice red or some of the stiffer varieties of relaxant, rather than a stimulant. The reason for the theme is a historical context.
David Hume, one of the three great empiricist philosophers (John Locke, and George Berkeley being the others), and arguably the most important, never held an academic posting. By the time he began applying for such positions he had already published his work A Treatise Concerning Human Nature (called 'The Treatise'.)
The work was monumental and brilliant and regarded as Hume's greatest, but it attracted the ire of zealots and repressive religionists due to Hume's apparent atheism and disdain for religious enthusiasm. His career in academia was sabotaged and politically stymied from that point onwards.
Hume famously wrote an anonymous article called An Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature to promote his work, and this article served as something of a precis to Hume's Later An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
During his brilliant but troubled career, Hume was a frequenter of coffee houses in Edinburgh and La Flèche in France where he lived for a time to save costs, and where he famously taunted the Jesuits with his writings.
(Return to Ontic Cafe Home.)
Ontic Cafe Philosophy Short Shots #2: What is the Self Part 1
This 3 Minute Ontic Cafe Philosophy Short Shot is a figurative 3 minutes! It is a little longer (more like 5 minutes) and the material a little more wordy. This time your humble philosopher-producer has included spoken narrative. If you wish to use the video for a presentation you will need to turn off the sound!Hume fans should enjoy it, and I hope that other Ontic Cafe guests get something out of it. 1 and a half beans for this one, because of a couple of technical terms.
Ontic CafeOne Bean Difficulty:
Philosophical Zombie Short Shot
Ontic Cafe's Philosophy Short Shots
Philosophy is a vast discipline, with many sub disciplines - and that is just Western continental and Anglo American philosophy. Everyone thinks that they are a philosopher, and most people have had what we call a philosophical discussion at some point in their lives.
However, students who come to undergraduate philosophy courses often discover something surprising about formal philosophical training. It can be quite hard. The new terminology and abstract concepts come thick and fast, and it can take a quick mind to adjust to such a new kind of learning.
Then there is the habit many philosophers have of being intentionally abstruse - hard to understand. Even other philosophers don't like it!
The German existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger once said:
"Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. Those who idolize "facts" never notice that their idols only shine in a borrowed light."
The world renowed American linguist Noam Chomsky once said of the work of the much loved and vaunted postmodern continental philosopher Jacques Derrida that it was impossible to understand. Chomsky has called the work of Jacques Lacan and Derrida absurd, infantile and ridiculous:
Thus we go from one absurdity to another - Stalinism, existentialism. Lacan, Derrida - some of them obscene ( Stalinism), some simply infantile and ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida).
What hope then have new students and novices got of understanding what is going on with philosophy- and given the kind of infighting apparent in the above, why bother with it at all?
Well, this is Ontic Cafe, and we know the value of good quality philosophy. It i discouraging to the open minded novice that the analytic philosopher John Searle said of 19th century continental philosopher Derrida that:
...Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am ... said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French...[H]e said, "He writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, 'You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.' That’s the terrorism part."
Here is the interview:
This is all arguably very discouraging, but there is much hope. Paul Grice - another analytic philosopher of the Anglo-American tradition - presented four maxim's for philosophical writing that Searle repeatedly mentions as "be clear, be brief, be orderly, and avoid obscurity of expression."
You can look up the full set of Grice's maxims of conversational clarity according to his cooperative principle (2) The idea is to help the other person to understand by avoiding the obscurantism that Derrida and Lacan are accused of.
The Ontic Cafe short shots series is to be launched over the next week. We will be selecting some of the best and most interesting dilemma's, paradoxes, and arguments from the analytic tradition and explaining them quickly and basically. We will aspire to adherence to Grice's maxims.
Here is the list of the first four short shots soon to be released by category or sub discipline:
1. PHILOSOPHY OF MIND: Rene Descarte's pineal gland, animal spirits, and the explanatory regress for Cartesian dualism about mind.
2. PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: Aquinas' ontological argument.
3. METAPHYSICS AND PLATONISM: The epistemic argument against the existence of Platonic entities.
4. LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS: Russell's paradox: the set of all sets that are not members of themself.
First will be given a short explanation situation the problem, and then the problem will be stated clearly. Short shots are limited to 3 minutes in length.
Stay tuned.
1. Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 307.
2. Grice, H. P. Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1989 26-7.
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