

Philosophy and Lisp - r11t
http://jng.imagine27.com/articles/2011-01-08-140227_philosophy.html

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kdeberk
Edit: I'm not sure if the one who posted this is the author of the post, but
this is directed at the author.

It seems to be a nice idea to connect philosophy to Lisp, but it is too short,
it lacks coherent arguments and it jumps from one proposition to another
without finishing the previous one.

For example, when you explain what you think philosophy is, you cannot simply
cast aside everything after Socrates as irrational absolutism (Descartes'
"evil demon" certainly is not irrational.) You need to explain why you think
it is irrational.

Also, where is your evidence for claims such as "It would follow that the
greater the fidelity a programming language has to these mathematical concepts
and the more it builds upon them then the more powerful the programming
language will be." and "History provides the evidence in that there is no
other programming language that has done this better than Lisp."

Also, "Sound philosophy demanded that these mathematical concepts be tested by
evidence, logic and rigor from some very basic premises that were built up to
more complex and powerful structures of thought which were proved to be true.
" So how did one prove these structures of thought to be true?

~~~
merijnv
> Also, "Sound philosophy demanded that these mathematical concepts be tested
> by evidence, logic and rigor from some very basic premises that were built
> up to more complex and powerful structures of thought which were proved to
> be true. " So how did one prove these structures of thought to be true?

There is some excellent essays answering the points you raise here in some of
the Less Wrong sequences. Rather then butcher them here I will just point you
to the "Map and Territory" sequence going into the subject "What is truth?",
"Can we determine truth?", etc. the essays are here:
<http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Map_and_Territory_(sequence)>

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jdkoeck
"It is NOT the charlatan 'philosophy' of mysticism, positivism, relativism,
perspectivism, nihilism and altruism of Plato, Marx, Imannuel Kant,
Kierkegaard, Hegel and so many others whose theories have tragically played
out in human history ..."

To the author : you could learn a thing or too about structured thought and
clear exposition from these people.

~~~
route66
Not only that. Promoting Sokrates and defying Plato, doing away with Kant
while praising the rise of enlightenment is, too say the least, amusing.

I already feel irritated with the apparent need of the companies to describe
themselves as having a "philosophy" (read: 2 points which distinguish them
from their competitors), but this rambling is different, though not better.

To enjoy your lunchtime, i suggest though you read through until you find that
Lisp is a language with moral baked right in. Bless JMC.

Signal vs. noise => Low.

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gphil
I don't even know where to start with this because there are so many things I
would like to respond to and I don't really have the time right now, but I at
least want to point out one point that really bothered me:

"This is the classical philosophy of Aristotle and Socrates which is rational
absolutism. It is NOT the charlatan 'philosophy' of mysticism, positivism,
relativism, perspectivism, nihilism and altruism of Plato, Marx, Imannuel
[sic] Kant, Kierkegaard, Hegel and so many others..."

First, it's simply not possible to make a clear distinction between the
philosophy of Socrates and the philosophy of Plato, as Socrates never wrote
anything himself and all we know of him is through Plato's writings. Even
using Plato's writings it is impossible to truly discern what the
philosophical differences between Plato and Socrates were exactly, as we only
have access to Plato's Socrates.

Also trying to separate Aristotle's writings from a more "religious" tradition
is a pretty ironic mistake. Aristotle's biggest contribution to modern society
probably comes through his influence on the early Catholic church. In fact,
the prevailing Aristotelian worldview of the Catholic church during the middle
ages is exactly what was called into question by the Renaissance and
Enlightenment thinkers when it was replaced with more rational and humanist
philosophies, like those of Immanuel Kant (who is also on the "wrong" side of
the author's dichotomy despite probably being the most in line with what the
author is trying to espouse.)

I've probably over-generalized myself in the last few paragraphs as I am not
an expert on the history of Philosophy and I wrote this quickly, but I at
least wanted to point out some obvious inaccuracies in the author's portrayal
of that history so nobody gets the wrong idea.

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Stormbringer
Eh. Lisp is just a self-interpreting abstract syntax tree. It's a nice party
trick but not really that big of a deal.

//slaps self

Sorry, forgot where I was for a minute. Lisp is the best language ever!!!
Anyone that doesn't agree obviously doesn't understand it!!! Only 1% of all
projects are in Lisp because only the top 1% of programmers are worthy of it!

Relevant::

<http://www.dilbert.com/2011-01-09/>

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nadam
I love philosophy but for me Lisp is just yet another programming language. (I
don't even know what is the definition of Lisp, as there are lots of Lisps. Is
it that there is no syntax but the programmer should type in the AST as it is
using parentheses?)

I agree that philosophical and mathematical thinking is very helpful for a
programmer. Especially mathematical thinking: those guys have found out some
very mature thoughts throughout the centuries. But they can also be used in
other languages than Lisp.

Also I want to point out that it is not necessarily true that functional
languages are based on mathematics and imperative ones not.

Von Neumann was one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century and in
my opinion his 'fully imperative' invention, the Neumann Architecture is as
beautiful an idea both mathematically both philosophically as the Lambda
Calculus.

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borism
what a load of BS

