
Concerning Stephen Hawking’s Claim  That Philosophy Is Dead (2012) [pdf] - lainon
http://filozofskivestnikonline.com/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/120/117
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JohnStrange
As a philosopher who also works in philosophy and frequently reviews for top
journals, I have skimmed over this article and unfortunately have to say that
these kind of loose essays who mingle together various unrelated issues in
some grand tour de force without any stringent argumentation don't do our
discipline much of a favor.

In my personal experience, roughly 90% of philosophy publications are trash
(give or take), but the remaining 10% are extremely interesting and worth
reading both by philosophers and people outside the field. You have to pick
carefully. Moreover, if you look at the history of philosophy that has always
been the case, although the percentage of trash might have increased a little
bit lately due to the nature of peer reviewing and the overall state of the
discipline as a profession (too many people, not enough room for originality,
too much focus on number of publications and self-promotion).

Hawking's point was different, though, and he's essentially right. The vast
majority of all professional philosophers simply don't have the mathematical
skills and time to keep at pace with any developments in physics after special
relativity and early quantum physics. But don't blame the philosophers alone
for it, this is the result of our educational system and the extreme rise of
mathematical methods in sciences in general. Who can afford, in our modern
society, to master the latest developments of String Theory and what's going
on in philosophy with its many areas and subareas, all of this at the same
time?

On a side note, if you're interested in formal philosophy, exact philosophy,
philosophy as a science or however you might call it, I'd recommend studying
mathematics instead and philosophy only as a secondary topic or not at all.
It's easy to get into a philosophy department as a mathematician, there are
many examples, but the other way round? Not going to happen.

~~~
jmcmichael
I'm curious why you believe all philosophers need to keep up with mathematics
and science, as you appear to imply. Certainly philosophers working in
branches that deal directly with science, math, and the nature of reality must
maintain an accurate perspective on the latest research and methods to
properly do their job. Philosophers of science must actually study the focus
of their research. Those working in metaphysics must ensure their theories do
not conflict with those of physicists (or ensure they conflict in interesting
and valid ways).

But what of ethics, aesthetics, politics and other more humanistic branches of
philosophy requires those doing working within them to keep pace with the
latest developments in physics and maths?

~~~
wu-ikkyu
While many major schools of philosophy are strongly related to the accepted
mathematical/scientific theory of the day, OP seems to be making the unproven
theoretical assumption that the answers to the metaphysical questions "where
do I come from, why do I exist?" can be _explained_ using mathematical models.

~~~
SerLava
What kind of question is that though? In that sort of question, I sense a
hostility toward a plain answer.

We violently exploded and cooled, and the crispy outer crust of a planet
started to organize itself, eventually resulting in a loose group of
combinations of matter called people. I mean that's what happened.

That, or we're here to be nice to other people... I don't think the
mathematical models are at issue here.

~~~
ordu
> We violently exploded and cooled, and the crispy outer crust of a planet
> started to organize itself, eventually resulting in a loose group of
> combinations of matter called people. I mean that's what happened.

Your answer is not the answer. How we was able to explode when there was
nothing to explode? When there was no space to explode?

Once upon a time lived a man named Newton. He invented gravitational theory.
We study this theory in school and have no questions for it (or at least the
most people don't). But the contemporaries of Newton had a lot of questions.
They didn't like the idea of long-range interaction between planets. How
planets can know their masses and masses of other planets to move smoothly by
Newton's law of gravity?

Make a break, think a little about how did you feel about newtonian gravity
before you discover general relativity. Isn't newtonian gravity looked great
theory explaining all the things? And if so, maybe general relativity in you
mind is another semantic stopsign* like newtonian gravity was? Maybe its just
the cheap way to answer complex questions without answering?

I'm not sure about general relativity, but I'm almost sure about quantum
mechanics: QM do not answer questions, QM is just a bunch of calculation
methods to predict nature behaviour. Like Newton gravity equation was just
calculation method, which is able to predict, but unable to explain.

> That, or we're here to be nice to other people... I don't think the
> mathematical models are at issue here.

Yes, you are right. Mathematics is unable to solve such a problems, because
philosophy has not made sufficiently strict and clean abstractions, which
mathematicians can use in their equations. Mathematics can't work with real
problems, only with abstract ones.

*) [https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Semantic_stopsign](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Semantic_stopsign)

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QuantumRoar
> By the same token, consider an ultra-relational metaphysics such as that of
> Bruno Latour, who tells us that a thing is nothing more than whatever it
> modifies, transforms, perturbs, or creates. If this were true, then
> everything would be nothing more than its current effects on everything
> else; the surface events and interactions of the world at this moment would
> be its only existing layer, with nothing held in reserve and no possible
> engine of change.

But that is precisely how it is. Things that do not interact, do not exist.

~~~
Filligree
> But that is precisely how it is. Things that do not interact, do not exist.

What kind of predictive statement are you trying to make? How does the world
change if your statement is correct, as opposed to false? What would be
different?

~~~
QuantumRoar
The kind of predictive statements that all physicists are making for quite a
while now and on which all of our technological progress is founded.

If there were some other fundamental means by which reality might be modified
besides the basic interactions we know, our standard model of particle physics
couldn't work so well, right? So to our knowledge, interaction is the one and
only thing that puts a thing into existence or not.

As a side note: that is also the reason why WIMPs (weakly interacting massive
particles) are a candidate for dark matter. The idea is that there might exist
a form of matter that only interacts very weakly and thus it is incredibly
hard to confirm its existence. Furthermore these WIMPs are massive (compared
to other known elementary particles), so they might be out of reach of our
particle accelerators.

These kinds of predictions follow from that.

~~~
IanCal
> If there were some other fundamental means by which reality might be
> modified besides the basic interactions we know, our standard model of
> particle physics couldn't work so well, right? So to our knowledge,
> interaction is the one and only thing that puts a thing into existence or
> not.

You're looking at this backwards, I think.

You claimed that a thing must interact in order to exist. If this is false
then things exist but do not interact. Things which exist but do not interact
with anything would not change anything we see in the world at all, and cannot
in any way be tested for. The statement provides no predictions.

~~~
QuantumRoar
I see your point. What I meant was that existence and interaction are
equivalent. But I see that I didn't express myself well there.

Let us presume that existence and interaction can be separate. Let us also
assume for a moment that there is a definition of 'existence' without
interaction. Then a reality with a thing that exists but doesn't interact is
equivalent to a reality where this thing doesn't exist. If a thing's existence
and non-existence yield equivalent realities, we can always assume that it
does not exist. Therefore, we can set 'it interacts' and 'it exists' to be
equivalent for all practical purposes.

That's my line of thought, which of course still doesn't exclude that things
can 'exist' but not 'interact'. But if you would press me, I'd ask for a
definition of the word 'existence' without using any form of interaction. I
wouldn't know a proper answer to that.

~~~
IanCal
I think really this is leading into much more philosophical discussions. The
practical viewpoint is I think 'anything that cannot interact with me can
safely be ignored as irrelevant'.

But to push into a few thought experiments:

If I go into a room and it is sealed up so that nothing at all may escape and
the room may never be opened, do I cease to exist? Or do you? Do we now have
two realities? Is it possible to construct a setup where _discrete_ realities
no longer explain the true nature? Can I construct a system where two agents
will disagree on where the boundaries are between these realities? Since we
can create things where two parties cannot agree on the ordering of events,
perhaps this could be extended to identify a setup and point in time where two
parties would disagree on whether or not something exists (I'm really not sure
on this, I feel the answer is no but then I think that about other things that
smarter people than me can construct).

Do you consider only current technology or must we also consider things we
don't yet know? When humanity was in its early stages, did one tribe not exist
to the other? Did some countries not exist?

Do things "exist" if they don't currently interact, and may never interact,
but possibly could?

The practical conclusion is perhaps that the term "exist" isn't very helpful.

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fiatjaf
I urge you interested readers to read Wolfgang Smith's article on this topic:
[https://perennialphilosophyreadings.wordpress.com/2012/02/26...](https://perennialphilosophyreadings.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/response-
to-stephen-hawkings-physics-as-philosophy-by-wolfgang-smith/)

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chrxn
What would Pythagoras say?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras)

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amelius
What does that mean to the Ph.D. (= Doctor of Philosophy)?

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JohnLeTigre
Maybe he meant that positivism is dead.

