
Philosophy as Math-Like Thinking - gsjbjt
http://jessylin.com/2019/11/17/what-philosophy-is-good-for/
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pmoriarty
_" Philosophy is a way to address these questions more systematically -- it
takes our fuzzy concepts and intuitions and makes them rigorous... In
metaphysics, for example, when we talk about ontology, we try to formalize our
natural intuitions for objects"_

This is only true of certain types of philosophy -- analytic philosophy and
its brethren in the 20th and 21st Centuries, and some systematic philosophers
of earlier times.

Nietzsche is one of the most well-known counterexamples. Writing in an
intuitive, aphoristic style, he was far from interested in any kind of
systematization or formalism.

The playfulness of Derrida and the approaches of some other of the
Postmodernists are also the antithesis of what this article claims philosophy
is about.

The Pre-Socratics and Socrates himself were not interested in systematization
or formalism either. Neither was most Eastern philosophy.

Philosophic interest in formalizing only rears its head in philosophy towards
the end of the 19th Century with Frege and the logical-positivists (themselves
ancestors to the Analytics) who followed him.

There's plenty of philosophy that just isn't interested in this.

On the other hand, if what the author is getting at is that philosophers tend
to examine the questions and subjects that interest them in a deeper way than
most other non-scientist do, then I would agree with that.

~~~
bananamerica
Derrida is a lot closer to literature than it is to philosophy, including
Nietzsche. He’s a charlatan that uses cryptic language to make his writing
seem serious and profound. Not unlike Jacques Lacan and Aleister Crowley.

~~~
masswerk
Lacan is actually surprisingly rigorous or, at least, methodical. It's just,
if you attempt to talk about what preconditions language and language like
structures using language, you necessarily enter a metadiscourse. (Having read
Lacan in philosophy was actually of help to me to come up with some algorithms
as a programmer.)

~~~
bananamerica
If Lacan could be methodical (and I don't think he did), it would be much in
the same way psychotics can be methodical.

> you necessarily enter a metadiscourse

It's quite possible for metadiscourse to be also intelligible. No reason to
write like a lunatic.

~~~
masswerk
I think, much of the reception of Lacan is specific to the language, language
as in translation. E.g., mind that the early US reception is somewhat
unfortunate due to the translation. On the other hand, the German edition
tends to be a bit pompous, probably in order to establish the text in the
context of the German academic discourse of the time. (Especially the _Ecrits_
are about unreadable at times.) The Seminars, however, are, at least in the
original, colloquial, slowly spoken, trying to find appropriate words for
where there are none. And he's developing a methodology of his own, for sure.
He even tried to express them conclusively in mathematical formulars and
diagrams ("mathemes" – yes, we may have to put an emphasis on "tried"). If you
have a look at Seminar II _(Le moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la
technique de la psychoanalyse, 1954-1955),_ you even may observe that he
entertained relationship with the cybernetic community, there are also traits
of Rosenblut, contemporary mathematics… And, not to the least, some of Lacan's
concepts seem to have shown up in FMRI findings of the last years.

Edit: If we entertain for a moment Marx's thought of history being the natural
history of mankind, we may assume that this natural history sediments into
technological artifacts, for short, technology, machines. If we also assume
some value for the concept of the _moi,_ we may conclude that we put some of a
resemblance to our own into these machines. There's a mutual inheritance in
the description. And machines, which are are also kind of sediments of
algorithms or symbolic forms in their own, adhere – at least to some degree –
to the same preconditions. (This, BTW, is a great way of looking at 2001, A
Space Odyssey.) There's something to be learned from exploring either of them.
However, we may have to find appropriate methodology for each of them,
according to the specific scope. Since the venture of describing the
preconditions of the human psyche equals the endeavor of describing a scope
from within this very scope, we also encounter Boges' paradox of the map at
1:1 scale, which doesn't do for a description. What to do about it?
Necessarily, we'd have to resort to some analogies, but, at the same time,
we'd have to invalidate them, in order to not fall prey to ontology. What's
left? Probably a system which is built more on resonance than on conclusive
description, entertained by the mutual relations and suspense of the various
concepts, which, at the same time, provides proper meaning to these concepts.
Some sort of a bootstrapping process. We try to talk about meaning and its
constraints by the very process of making meaning. Which, BTW, is totally
conclusive with post-structuralist epistemology, as long it is internally
conclusive. (Mind that this is for the most in the 1950s and 1960s, at the
height of the linguistic turn. – And it's a generation of French academics who
were, at least to some extent, formed by the confrontation with Hegel and
Heidegger, and by the example of Lévi-Strauss.)

~~~
bananamerica
I've read different translations, I've have been part of a prestigious
Lacanian psychoanalytic society that's a direct descendant of his original -
physical - school in France. At its best Lacan's works is an interesting form
of literature, at it's worse it's indistinguishable from pseudo-science and
charlatanism. His followers are basically mystics and cultists.

If you read Aleister Crowley you will get to the same point: "this is so
incomprehensible that it must have meaning. And after years of decyphering,
there it is, _actual_ meaning!".

Human beings are genetically formed to see patterns. If I generated a list of
grammatically correct phrases combining random words, people would find
meaning there too.

~~~
masswerk
I'd say, if it makes sense as a system and you can make sense by it and in it,
it must be a system, at least. If we may further make predictions, which prove
to hold (compare the FMRI findings mentioned above), and/or add explanation to
what was previously unexplained, there may be even _some_ value to it. :-)

~~~
bananamerica
Supposing that a random word generator is a worthwhile source of valuable
knowledge, and if you're willing to concede that Lacan is/was just as good as
a random word generator, then YES, Lacanian psychoanalysis is a valuable
epistemological framework.

But

> a random word generator is a worthwhile source of valuable knowledge

Is obviously valse!

~~~
masswerk
I guess, we won't come to terms on this subject.

(I, on the other hand, do not understand, why certain economists are supposed
to make any sense, just because their words are easily intelligible.)

P.S.: I should specify (previously supposing this was obvious from context),
I'm distinctively talking about Lacan in terms of metapsychology and not as a
psychoanalytical framework in the strict, therapeutical sense. Yes, here we
may have to make a distinction. I'm not too sure, if I would prefer a Lacanian
therapy. (Probably not.)

~~~
bananamerica
To me, Lacanian therapy was surprisingly good, not because of Lacanian
psychoanalysis makes any sense, but because Lacanian circles attract some of
the most intelligent psychotherapists.

Psychology, as a science, is a very practical, statistical, straightforward
field. Research does require intellectual sophistication, but psychotherapy is
largely the application of proven prophylactic you better not mess too much
with.

Some of the smartest psychologists tend to flock to the set of references that
most eludes them.

So Lacanian psychology may be a good choice because smart people give the best
advice.

------
derex
> You learn to find an isomorphism between the concepts in your brain and
> someone else’s.

Coming from a math background myself, this is a really great way to relate
philosophy to something I'm used to thinking about. So many times in
conversations I've noticed that people talk about the same fundamental ideas
but use different language and constructs to express them, and end up thinking
(mistakenly) they disagree with each other.

------
mwlp
I had similar thoughts after finishing an engineering ethics course.
Everything is an argument. Strong arguments often demonstrate their
superiority over alternatives. The more dimensions the problem context has
(or, of course, the more alternatives), the more difficult this becomes.
Luckily, arguments can usually be abstracted to ethical frameworks or
philosophical traditions.

Sometimes these wrappers are easier to reason about. Sometimes, if the problem
context is a foreign government's pending social credit system whose design
and implementation is clouded by deceit and unknown consequences, all we can
do is turn to Aristotle and ask, "[How] can we teach others to be good
citizens?"

\---

Don't take philosophy for the math-like thinking. Take math for that. Take it
for the cool readings, discussions, and qt existentialist girls rarely found
in compilers.

~~~
FranzFerdiNaN
Philosophy is more than just cool readings. You have book clubs for cool
readings. Philosophy is for learning critical thinking (just like math is,
just both in different and complementary ways), evaluating arguments made by
others, forming arguments on your own and thinking those arguments and their
consequences through to the very end.

Take both math and philosophy, as both enrich your life and aren't
interchangeable.

------
zozbot234
'Philosophy is like math's ne'er-do-well brother. It was born when Plato and
Aristotle looked at the works of their predecessors and said in effect "why
can't you be more like your brother?" Russell was still saying the same thing
2300 years later.' ~pg

~~~
ngcc_hk
Not sure it is. And I think the paper argue more about rigorous thinking and
expressing it.

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jamesrcole
I've read a fair bit of philosophy, and I think the approach this post
describes is often problematic.

They try to treat concepts as if they were like mathematical symbols that they
can reason precisely with. The problem is when they don't understand the
concepts involved well-enough to be able to treat them in this way. This is
often the case, given that the subject-matter is in philosophy.

So you end up with a situation where it looks like they're drawing conclusions
in a rigorous fashion, but where it's actually a kind of garbage-in-garbage-
out situation.

Precision is really important. But you have to acknowledge the level of
precision that your level of understanding affords. Trying to be more precise
than that makes things worse.

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ngcc_hk
It is the argument and the process that counts. The destination is never
satisfactory. Like a tourist who enjoy the train (of thought) journey. Get out
and and onto another.

There is no answer. Those have answer like Maths or Physics is not superior
but just left. What remains are the hard part. And we left with only with
signpost and past journeys.

Philosophy is post-thinking. Nothing like maths.

------
jpster
I’d be interested to hear book recommendations that discuss “fuzzy thinking”
and how to avoid it.

~~~
hliyan
Not entirely the point of the book, but I found that the first chapter of
_Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid_ (which discusses formal
systems, symbol manipulation and how that relates to thinking) was a catalyst
for me to tighten up my thinking processes.

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stiglitz
I’ve read some po-mo stuff (like Baudrillard). Terms are constantly used
without clear definitions, and rather than a logical progression of thoughts
it’s a snaggle of metaphors. That kind of reading is very thought-provoking,
but it’s the antithesis of math.

~~~
cam_l
I feel the same way about reading math (without ever studying it).

~~~
chongli
What math are you reading? All of the math textbooks I’ve read, in university,
begin each section with a precise definition and then proceed to examine the
implications. Theorems begin with a precise statement of the hypotheses and
conclusion before proceeding to the proof.

If you’re trying to read math on Wikipedia, without having studied it, you’re
going to have a bad time. Wikipedia’s math pages are better used as a
reference to remind you of what you already know and give you a jumping-off
point for related topics. They are not meant to teach you math.

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coldtea
This person confuses philosophy with what anglosaxon barbarians consider
philosophy...

------
romwell
Math is just a branch of philosophy which is not constrained by reality.

