
Was Wittgenstein Right? (2013) - scribu
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/was-wittgenstein-right/
======
ucaetano
This reminds me of someone who once told me that the vast majority of
philosophical problems are self-inflicted and caused by the intentional use of
vague and ambiguous definitions, and therefore could be solved trivially
simply by agreeing on a definition for something.

One example given was the Theseu's Paradox (or The Ship of Theseus):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)

The entire problem only exists because you're intentionally using a vague term
in the problem, therefore causing the problem itself.

At least that was the commentary, I'm not an expert in the subject, and I'm
sure many will disagree. But then, even the disagreeing is just pointlessly
creating a problem for the sake of the discussion.

~~~
zukzuk
I think you're missing something really profound here. I wrote my masters
thesis on identity problems in version control systems (Git, Mercurial,
Subversion, and the like). These systems are forced to take a stance on the
Ship of Theseus problem — they're tracking the identity of files/documents
whose entire contents, name, and format may change over time.

Different systems have chosen to take very different stances on this. As it
turns out, taking a stance on what makes a file a file (or a ship a ship) —
being explicit rather than vague — does not solve the problem. Not even close.
In fact, one of the many little things that make Git a brilliant piece of
software is that it refuses to take a stance on identity. Git is intentionally
vague about what makes a file a file. It doesn't actually track it at all —
file identity is determined retroactively. It's a question for which Git
intentionally doesn't have a straight answer.

What I think is really fascinating about all of this is that computers are
forcing us to deal with age-old philosophical problems head on. These are not
just interesting riddles anymore. They're real problems that need concrete
solutions. Event more interestingly, there is something in this that
establishes computing as categorically different from just pure mathematics.
Computing forces us to bridge abstraction with the real world — to answer
questions like what is the relationship between an abstract model and the
thing that is being modelled. This to me is really exciting, and what follows
from it can't be easily dismissed with a comment like "most philosophical
problems only exist because language is vague".

~~~
ucaetano
> These systems are forced to take a stance on the Ship of Theseus problem —
> they're tracking the identity of files/documents whose entire contents,
> name, and format may change over time.

But that's my point: when you choose to make a call on the definition os "the
same", the problem no longer exists. SoT only exists while you refuse to
provide a more precise definition for "the same".

> Different systems have chosen to take very different stances on this.

Yes, and _any_ stance will solve the problem. You could say that it is the
Schrodinger's Cat of philosophy: the moment you decide to go one level deeper
(open the box and observe the cat), the problem ceases to exist.

> These are not just interesting riddles anymore

Agreed, and the point of the original commentary was that they were never
interesting riddles to start with, they were only riddles at all because we
purposefully forced them to be riddles. We avoided the fact simply to carry on
the discussion.

Similarly, any judge won't care about the SoT, because at the end of the day,
that judge will have to make a call if the ship in question is Theseus' or
not.

And just like quantum mechanics, the moment you look at it, the "wave function
collapses" and you have a solution.

SoT is only a problem for the same duration as Schrodinger's cat: while you
refuse to open the box.

~~~
zukzuk
I think you missed the part where I said that Git intentionally _doesn't_ take
a stance. Or rather, it defers the commitment, a bit like Schrodinger in
regard to his cat. I guess what we agree on is that the problem goes away
(kind of) as soon as that deferred commitment is made — but the problem goes
away only for that particular instance, not in general.

What I'm arguing is that dismissing these philosophical problems as just
nonesense rooted in the vagueness of language is missing the point. If nothing
else, these paradoxes lay bare the vagueness of language, but moreover they
beg the question of why language is so vague. What's more, it turns out that
making language more precise — as we've tried to do with computers and
mathematics — doesn't seem to solve the problems at all. In fact, it seems to
lead to even more trouble, as, for example, the designers of Subversion or
Mercurial eventually discovered.

~~~
ucaetano
> What I'm arguing is that dismissing these philosophical problems as just
> nonesense rooted in the vagueness of language is missing the point.

Oh, I agree, I don't think they are nonsense at all, and they do force us to
think about the way we communicate and so on.

That's why I call them the Schrodinger's Cat of philosophy, while they only
exist until you decide to solve them, they do force us to think about how we
view the world.

But then you end up in another problem for philosophy: if what remains after
you remove all the natural sciences is just the problems that humans create
due to language, law, understanding, etc. and all of those are covered in
subject-specific human sciences (law, linguistics, psychology, behavioral
economics, etc.), what is left for philosophy?

Apparently, this is covered partially by this week's NPR Philosophy Talk:

[https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/does-science-over-
reach](https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/does-science-over-reach)

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MisterOctober
Another angle on Wittgenstein's rectitude, by the folks at Existential Comics
:

[http://existentialcomics.com/comic/245](http://existentialcomics.com/comic/245)

In which W's talking lion shows a taste for English pop groups and Ultimate
Frisbee

------
lebrad
The argument about science replacing philosophy is constantly presented as a
nuanced conundrum.

But there really are scientific questions and there really are philosophical
questions.

For example, when two cars crash, science can in principle tell us exactly at
what speeds they were traveling, what the drivers were doing, and all the
physical details.

But as humans we want to find not just what happened but who's at fault.

When we ask questions about guilt, we're asking a non-scientific,
philosophical question.

Understanding precisely what happened is important in assessing guilt, but
only up to a point. I don't mean questions of physical cause and effect, or
even of legal guilt, but actual culpability. If you think that question is
answerable, then you're in the realm of philosophy.

Questions of credit and blame lead to questions of good and bad. If you
believe that ethics are a real thing, then every decision has an ethical
dimension, and science can't really help with that.

The best attempt I've seen at reconciling science and physics is by Bob Doyle
at
[http://www.informationphilosopher.com/](http://www.informationphilosopher.com/)

~~~
Retra
Why do you think that guilt is a non-scientific question? Is it only because
it is too inadequately defined to produce a consistent interpretation?

And guilt probably has little to do with fault.

~~~
ethbro
The comment was presumably talking about guilt in the ethical rather than
factual sense.

E.g. Trolley Problem
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem)

~~~
Retra
Do you mean guilt-the-emotion, or guilt as a causal relation? Neither of those
are beyond the pervue of science. The only troubles you get -- the reasons
scientists don't engage in this kind of theorizing -- is that the domain is
both complex and culturally sensitive, and thus work doesn't receive funding
and appreciation. It's not because it can't be done.

~~~
ethbro
I meant guilt the causal relationship.

As you note, a large portion of it depends on value judgements. If I wilfully
murder 1 person to save 3 from being accidentally killed, am I guilty? What if
I take no action and allow 3 people to be accidentally killed?

Without attempting to Asimovly define the value of all possibilities, I'm not
sure how science _can_ answer these questions in any meaningful sense.

Without tumbling into a morass of complexity (e.g. a life is worth this
because of GDP per capita and birth rate and lifespan, and taking an action is
to be valued this way because of neuroscience and experimental psychology)
that, should it be fallen into, would start to look more like ethical
philosophy than post-Enlightenment science.

But then, that's why they were both the same field before experimental
repetition was enshrined...

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captain_perl
Einstein, Bertrand Russell and even Wittgenstein himself were all armchair
philosophers. They just formed their deductive powers in the modern scientific
era.

Wittgenstein is well-known for changing the origin of mathematical problems to
the most convenient in his mind - about as close to philosophy as you can get.

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p1necone
Funny that this is being posted here. Don't the foundations of computing come
from Philosophy?

~~~
ucaetano
For any X, the foundations of X come from Philosophy.

------
wittgenstein
Yes I was.

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yarrel
Which time?

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bingchenasian
To save you the click:

"Wittgenstein claims that there are no realms of phenomena whose study is the
special business of a philosopher, and about which he or she should devise
profound a priori theories and sophisticated supporting arguments. There are
no startling discoveries to be made of facts, not open to the methods of
science, yet accessible “from the armchair” through some blend of intuition,
pure reason and conceptual analysis. Indeed the whole idea of a subject that
could yield such results is based on confusion and wishful thinking."

~~~
hshehehjdjdjd
In other words, philosophy is a form of mental “self-stimulation.” It feels
like you’re accomplishing something when actually you aren’t. That matches my
views at any rate. Not that there’s anything wrong with a bit of self-
stimulation. I’m here commenting after all. But philosophy is pretty unique in
that they present their fun as some kind of noble pursuit.

~~~
darkmighty
More like, philosophy is the extreme version of the 'Uncategorized' box of
science -- it's almost the leftover pile which gets slowly picked up and put
into neat boxes of knowledge. Mechanical nature of life was once philosophical
musings, now is biology. Atomic nature of matter were philosophical musings,
now physics. Nature of consciousness is now philosophy, will sooner or later
become neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

Philosophy isn't useless. It is a ground for preliminary discussion before the
matter is ready to shift into more solid ground -- mathematics, logic, or hard
sciences.

That it suffers from (a degree of) infinite dwelling on pointless topics is
inevitable, because it is very hard to judge what will one day be useful or
legitimate of discussion; making the false positive nil will increase the
false negatives too much. Plus if philosophy decided on a too strict topic
regime, soon another field would be born to house the outcasts of academic
philosophy, thus becoming the new leftover pile of reason.

~~~
yabb
Pretty much this. It's like pre-science. I could see how a lot of modern
philosophy could be rehashing issues that have already been extensively
formalized though

~~~
andrepd
There is plenty of knowledge that is non-scientific. Not all knowledge is
accessible through the scientific method. Ethics, metaphysics, etc.

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perl4ever
I think he was right when he wrote "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß
man schweigen."

I once read a book by a Zen Master called "Wanting Enlightenment Is a Big
Mistake" and by the end of it, I agreed. Hence the book was worthless.

Edit: so is it fitting if this post earns me negative karma?

