Enjoyable article, probably true for many; making me further happy I just picked up a stack of James Hillman & other Archetypal Psychologies & symbol books.
A Philosopher Every Programmer Should Know: Susanne K. Langer
71–80 of 107 posts
Re: A Philosopher Every Programmer Should Know: Susanne K. Langer
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
A wise man (my advisor when I was doing my philosophy degree) once said something to the effect of: There are two great mistakes you can make in philosophy. One is deciding there is no ultimate answer. The other is deciding you've found it.
That's rather trite, especially considering it follows that standard wise-mystic pattern of "two statements which contradict each other." Someone wrote a comic about it but unfortunately I can't find it.
There's nothing inherently contradictory about an unknowable truth. Disagree: it's merely trite, not incorrect, and in spite of being trite it still brings a grin to my lips.
Re: A Philosopher Every Programmer Should Know: Susanne K. Langer
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans don't have "intrinsic" desires, and we don't have instincts (except arguably as babies), like building nests and hives. Instead, our desires become shaped over time by the process of thought and past experiences we've accumulated. I agree more with my grandparent post than my parent post. We have (as individuals) learned to value certain particular kinds of achievement, and when we do achieve those achievement…
Humans don't have "intrinsic" desires, and we don't have instincts Says who? Based on what? You are seriously underestimating one of the hardest questions ever posed and for which there is no (and there may never be) definitive answer. Tabula rasa, genetic determinism, nature vs nurture, etc are all deep, hard problems. As a matter of fact, can you even significantly define “desire” or “instinct”? A lot of smart peop…
Instead of responding to your parent directly, i'll just add that this is exactly why I prefaced my post with "I believe".
That said, I'm not implying we have built in instructions to go create a townhous. Simply that there is possibly a driving force that compels us to create, then a reward for doing so.
Re: A Philosopher Every Programmer Should Know: Susanne K. Langer
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
regarding n.2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity defines formally the concept of minimal encoding of a message
And as long as philosopher will refuse to dig a bit into mathematics or computer science for answers to questions they call "philosophical", I'll have a hard time being interested by philosophy.
Nice try troll. Philosophy plays a larger role in the lives of mathematicians than in the lives of natural scientists. Many mathematicians have domain expertise in philosophy. Your "philosopher" is a straw-man by comparison.
Re: A Philosopher Every Programmer Should Know: Susanne K. Langer
#75To be honest, it seems very superficial to me - like most philosophy. It starts with an arbitrary premise ("the brain wants to process symbols"). Since the premise is arbitrary, it doesn't help me at all. To me the interesting bit is "why does the brain want to process symbols". Which is probably better answered by evolution theory than by philosophy. Another example of the shallowness of philosophy: "I think, theref…
It starts with an arbitrary premise ("the brain wants to process symbols"). Since the premise is arbitrary, it doesn't help me at all.
I think you are far off the mark. Want may well be tangential.
The brain is a symbol processor; that's all it knows how to do. If there aren't positive feedbacks in place to encourage it to do what it does, this sole ability will atrophy and decay. Here's is your much vaunted evolution, in 36 words. The philosopher in me would much rather interrogate the implications and dynamics that this situation creates, and accept apriori what I see as self evident facts of creation.
Re: A Philosopher Every Programmer Should Know: Susanne K. Langer
#76To be honest, it seems very superficial to me - like most philosophy. It starts with an arbitrary premise ("the brain wants to process symbols"). Since the premise is arbitrary, it doesn't help me at all. To me the interesting bit is "why does the brain want to process symbols". Which is probably better answered by evolution theory than by philosophy. Another example of the shallowness of philosophy: "I think, theref…
I realize it is easy to pick on philosphy, but if you're going to write off one of our oldest disciplines it should at least come from an informed place: "I think therefore I am" is not Descartes' premise, but one of his conclusions. Even as a conclusion, it is mostly misunderstood. The point is not that it is the thinking that brings one into being, but that there is something there that must exist in order to do th…
Consider adding to the philosophy stack exchange?
http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/70/could-cogit...
Re: A Philosopher Every Programmer Should Know: Susanne K. Langer
#77Anyone mind if I promote http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/ here?
Re: A Philosopher Every Programmer Should Know: Susanne K. Langer
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the example you yourself gave of 'I think therefore I am', the claim following 'therefore' is a conclusion, not a premise. So no, Descartes didn't start with the premise that he existed.
He seems to assume that because he (what?) can think, he exists. Either he has an implicit assumption about what it means to exist (which he never describes, and which is therefore useless to me), or his definition of exist is "can think", in which case the famous proof would be trivial and useless (it would boil down to "I exist therefore I exist"). I already see many people here don't understand what I mean, but th…
Such arrogance from someone who clearly has no understanding of what he critiques. I hate to add to the dogpile, but seriously take a step back and realize that maybe there's something you're missing rather than everyone else being fooled.
Your issue here seems to be "this doesn't answer the question I want therefore this is useless". This is just a lack of imagination on your part. Sure, he doesn't delve into the nature of what it means to exist, but "I think therefore I am" crosses a huge chasm in its own right. It establishes existence. One needs to do this before you can begin to discuss the nature of existence.
The "uselessness" of philosophy for most people, and I think this is where it fails for you, is that it provides far more questions than it provides answers. Philosophy doesn't package the world into a neat little box; it provides you with a framework to develop your own understanding of it. You still have to do much of the mental legwork yourself. Contrast this with science, where it does provide you with neat little bite-sized answers to satisfy ones superficial curiosity (E=mc^2? Cool!)
Re: A Philosopher Every Programmer Should Know: Susanne K. Langer
#79Read Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus if you want to read a remarkably bug-free "program". It reads like code.
Interestingly enough, there is an effort to "port" the Tractatus' logic to software engineering: http://www.hxa.name/notes/note-hxa7241-20110219T1113Z.html
Re: A Philosopher Every Programmer Should Know: Susanne K. Langer
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
How will neuroethology answer normative questions?
It won't, it will show that there are no normative questions. (exaggerated on purpose, of course, but it's The Final Frontier - once we know how the brain works, we will have a real insight into the nature of morality and we will have 'proof' for the objective nature thereof - all this IMNSHO of course ;) )
I think you're confused. There are clearly normative questions; "Should I do X?" for any value of X is a normative question. You might have intended to contend that there are no normative facts: that there is no "right answer", as it were, to normative questions, merely what we choose to do.
However, this is not something that science can prove, at least without adding the claim that the only facts there are are physical facts. You're basically suggesting that we open up people's heads, look around, go "Nope, no norms here!" and take that to be evidence that they don't exist. This is problematic at best, since were they to exist, normative facts would seem to have properties quite at odds with physical facts, and your assertion starts to look question-begging.
Metaethics is not my area, so I'm afraid all of this is rather rough and ready, but the SEP article [1] is a pretty decent starting point.