Principia Mathematica

Bertrand_Russell said:
Hi there, new to the forum, just popping by to see if anyone here is interested in philosophy ??

Thanks, Bert
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I once asked a professor of philosophy "what is philosophy about" he answered "philosophy is about radically critical self-consciousness". It was thirty years later that I began to understand the meaning of this phrase.
 
So are ya channeling this philosophical mathematician? If we are gonna get into denoting phrase you'll find a few here ready willing and able to keep up, but don't go to fast and lose us slower folks that are trying to follow. eg don't skip over anything you assume everyone should already know...as I don't.

and yeah....welkum.

Are you a pacifist socialist as well? How far does this go? Do you think he hung out any with Linus Pauling?
 
wil said:
So are ya channeling this philosophical mathematician?
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I haven't tried that, but I like the idea.

If we are gonna get into denoting phrase you'll find a few here ready willing and able to keep up, but don't go to fast and lose us slower folks that are trying to follow. eg don't skip over anything you assume everyone should already know...as I don't.
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Right, I thought maybe we could discuss philosophy in the language of the ancient Greeks..........

Να έχετε μια καλή μέρα!

and yeah....welkum.
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Oh, thanks for the welcome !!

Are you a pacifist socialist as well? How far does this go?
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We philosophers don't like to talk politics, lol.


Do you think he hung out any with Linus Pauling?
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Or Linus van Pelt.
 
wil said:
So are ya channeling this philosophical mathematician?
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Channeling ? lol.

If we are gonna get into denoting phrase you'll find a few here ready willing and able to keep up, but don't go to fast and lose us slower folks that are trying to follow. eg don't skip over anything you assume everyone should already know...as I don't.
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I am just here to talk about the history of western philosophy.

and yeah....welkum.
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Oh, thanks, nice to meet you.


Are you a pacifist socialist as well? How far does this go? Do you think he hung out any with Linus Pauling?
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Well, I think I better stick with philosophy for the time being. Politics can get into hot water. And religion, well that can mean real trouble, lol.
 
Bertrand Russell:
"I am just here to talk about the history of western philosophy."

Do you find Russian philosophy to be Western?
 
Bertrand_Russell said:
Coberst, you appear to be the local philosopher here. Who are your favorite philosophers ?



I like that operational definition.
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I am a retired engineer. I acquired an MA in philosophy along the way because I felt that my education left me as a hollow man. Also along the way I became a self-actualizing self-learner.

In my study of the works of the great minds of the past I discovered the works of George Lakoff. George together with great thinkers of many domains of knowledge developed what they call SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science).

First generation of cognitive science was developed around AI (artificial intelligence), i.e. the manipulation of symbols, i.e. the attempt to duplicate human intelligence via mechanical manipulation of non meaningful symbols.

We have in our Western philosophy a traditional theory of faculty psychology wherein our reasoning is a faculty completely separate from the body. “Reason is seen as independent of perception and bodily movement.” It is this capacity of autonomous reason that makes us different in kind from all other animals. I suspect that many fundamental aspects of philosophy and psychology are focused upon declaring, whenever possible, the separateness of our species from all other animals.

This tradition of an autonomous reason began long before evolutionary theory and has held strongly since then without consideration, it seems to me, of the theories of Darwin and of biological science. Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed considerable empirical evidence supporting Darwin and not supporting the traditional theories of philosophy and psychology regarding the autonomy of reason. Cognitive science has focused a great deal of empirical science toward discovering the nature of the embodied mind.

The three major findings of cognitive science are:
The mind is inherently embodied.
Thought is mostly unconscious.
Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

“These findings of cognitive science are profoundly disquieting [for traditional thinking] in two respects. First, they tell us that human reason is a form of animal reason, a reason inextricably tied to our bodies and the peculiarities of our brains. Second, these results tell us that our bodies, brains, and interactions with our environment provide the mostly unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics, that is, our sense of what is real.”

All living creatures categorize. All creatures, as a minimum, separate eat from no eat and friend from foe. As neural creatures tadpole and wo/man categorize. There are trillions of synaptic connections taking place in the least sophisticated of creatures and this multiple synapses must be organized in some way to facilitate passage through a small number of interconnections and thus categorization takes place. Great numbers of different synapses take place in an experience and these are subsumed in some fashion to provide the category eat or foe perhaps.

Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories.

Quotes from Philosophy in the Flesh by Lakoff and Johnson

SGCS has challenged a priori philosophy with this new understanding of how our mind functions. I have no favorite philosopher.
 
Let's begin our journey:

"The philosopher who is to be a guardian must, according to Plato, return into the cave, and live among those who have never seen the truth. It would seem that God Himself, if He wishes to amend His Creation, must do likewise; a Christian Platonist might so interpret the Incarnation. But it remains completely impossible to explain why God was not content with the world of ideas. The philosopher finds the cave in existance, and is actuated by benevolence in returning to it; but the Creator, if he created everything, might, one would think, have avoided the cave altogether".

Ref. - "A History of Western Philosophy", Bertrand Russell, Touchstone Publishers, page 130, 1945.
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There is much to understand here. Let's not try to take it in all at once. Let's step back and understand the larger picture.

Look at how these ideas transcend time and thought. From Plato to the Christian era. The story of the cave. The guardian. Can man move from ignorance to knowledge and then return to illuminate the other men ?

These ideas are foundational and set the direction for our journey { : ).
 
coberst said:
I am a retired engineer. I acquired an MA in philosophy along the way because I felt that my education left me as a hollow man. Also along the way I became a self-actualizing self-learner.
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Wonderful, you will be one of our opinion leaders. Please give some thought to the ideas behind guardians, the cave and Parmenides.


In my study of the works of the great minds of the past I discovered the works of George Lakoff.
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Ok, we will do him later, lol.
 
Bertrand Russell said:
Can man move from ignorance to knowledge and then return to illuminate the other men ?
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What if the benefit of enlightenment is always a better cave? If not, then what is the benefit? If someone is enlightened then they should be able to make life better or that enlightenment is no good, but in that case a better life leads to more contentment and less reason to pursue enlightenment. If on the other hand the benefit is not a better cave, then why bother?

Following the above reasoning, enlightenment is the ability to see that things can improve. How does this square with your definition of enlightenment?
 
Dream said:
What if the benefit of enlightenment is always a better cave? ......
....If on the other hand the benefit is not a better cave, then why bother?
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Good points, Dream. To answer these questions, and the others, we need to begin with a review of the cave.

“This leads to the famous simile of the cave or den, according to which those who are destitute of philosophy may be compared to prisoners in a cave, who are only able to look in one direction because they are bound, and who have a fire behind them and a wall in front. Between them and the wall there is nothing; all that they see are shadows of themselves, and of objects behind them, cast on the wall by the light of the fire. Inevitably they regard these shadows as real, and have no notion of the objects to which they are due. At last some man succeeds in escaping from the cave to the light of the sun; for the first time he sees real things, and becomes aware that he had hitherto been deceived by shadows. If he is the sort of philosopher who is fit to become a guardian, he will feel it is his duty to those who were formerly his fellow-prisoners to go down again into the cave, instruct them as to the truth, and show them the way up. But he will have difficulty in persuading them, because coming out of the sunlight, he will see shadows less clearly than they do, and will seem to them stupider than before his escape”.

Reference – A History of Western Philosophy, p. 125.
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I find this passage quite powerful. It is not easily understood. What does Plato mean by “guardians’ , this is an important notion. Why would guardians have the motivation to return to the cave ? Why would the people feel that the guardian is “stupid” ? How can society recognize their guardians ?
 
What does Plato mean by “guardians’
A guardian's the guy who's able to escape the cavern when he wants. Then he returns back and seems stupid, for he sees the shadows dimly. A guardian is a mystic.
Why would guardians have the motivation to return to the cave ?
'Cause they want to help people and protect them from their stupidity, not to let 'em hurt one another. And one would ask, who ordered the guardians to guard the people in cave? People themselves. Their prison is only a shadow, but they don't know that.
Why would the people feel that the guardian is “stupid” ?
People fight for what they find jewelery and profit. The guardian sees all these to be shadows. He doesn't want to fight for shadowy jewels as the prisoners of the cavern do. They think he's crazy for his unwilling to be rich with [shadowy] jewels of the world.
How can society recognize their guardians ?
They love people and try to help them.
 
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