Philosophy quote: Nagel on Analytic Philosophy 1 Oct 20114 Oct 2011 In 1935, Ernest Nagel spent a year traveling around European philosophy departments, and he reported his observations on what he called the new “analytic philosophy” in the Journal of Philosophy. I was particularly taken by his programmatic description: the men with whom I have talked are impatient with philosophic systems built in the traditionally grand manner. Their pre-occupation is with philosophy as analysis; they take for granted a body of authentic knowledge acquired by the special sciences, and are concerned not with adding to it in the way research in these sciences adds to it, but with clarifying its meaning and implications. Philosophy for these men holds out no promise of settling questions which only the empirical sciences are competent to settle; nor does it assume the function of legislating what sort of things it is permissible or possible for the empirical sciences to investigate. Those who seek in philosophy a substitute for religion or a key to social salvation will not find it here. Found via NewAPPS Metaphysics Philosophy Quotes
Biology The Velvet Underground of… 8 Oct 2010 Recently there have been a couple of “Velvet Underground” posts, of the kind that the VU were a very unknown but amazingly influential group. As Chad Orzel says, “only of order a thousand people bought the first Velvet Underground record, but every one of them went on to start a… Read More
Epistemology More Whewell 26 Jul 2009 When we have thus obtained, with reference to any such subject as those we have here spoken of, these two portions of science, a systematic description of the facts, and a rigorous analysis of the causes, — the Phenomenology and the Ætiology of the subject, — we are prepared for… Read More
Philosophy On the moral purity of skeptics and fallacies 8 Jul 201122 Jun 2018 The recent furore, called #elevatorgate on Twitter, about what Richard Dawkins said in response to complaints of sexism amongst atheists, has hit Gawker, who finish with the line: “That’s skeptics. Rational about everything except themselves, self-preservation, and manners.” Now without discussing personalities (for as a Tone Moderator I eschew mere… Read More
Interesting. The shift to the Analytic philosophy of today is subtle but important: we no longer clarify the thoughts of scientists, but we actually become scientists. This, apparently, is due to Quine. Later on, in Nagel’s 1954 APA address, he gave a definition of “naturalism” which might interest you: Two theses seem to me central to naturalism as I conceive it. The first is the existential and causal primacy of organized matter in the executive order of nature. This is the assumption that the occurrence of events, qualities and processes, and the characteristic behaviors of various individuals, are contingent on the organization of spatio-temporally located bodies, whose internal structures and external relations determine and limit the appearance and disappearance of everything that happens… However, Naturalism does not maintain that only what is material exists… The second major contention of naturalism is that the manifest plurality and variety of things, of their qualities and their functions, are an irreducible feature of the cosmos, not a deceptive appearance cloaking some more homogeneous “ultimate reality” or trans-empirical substance, and that the sequential orders in which events occur or the manifold relations of dependence in which things exist are contingent connections, not the embodiments of a fixed and unified pattern of logically necessary links. (1954, 8-9)
Nick Smyth: Interesting.The shift to the Analytic philosophy of today is subtle but important… In Nagel’s 1954 APA address: … not a deceptive appearance cloaking some more homogeneous “ultimate reality” or trans-empirical substance… (1954, 8-9) Both theses are appropriate and extant but the deceptive appearance does cloak. Improvements can be made by mincing further. Philosophy excels at Meta™ reiterated Notwithstanding the hype about splitting hairs philosophy goes numb whence sub “ing” towards proto sub and pre. The asymmetry is peculiar given the fierce aptitude with details. Failure to reduce the irreducible is ironic and revealing ( and very difficult and confusing too). Perhaps the indicated asymmetry explains ‘all’.