Re: [Wittrs] INFO: Replies to Hawking

From: Philip Goff <philgoff1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: PHILOS-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 17:01:25 +0100
Fabio:
Excellent summary of Hawking's philosophical discussion of realism versus
anti-realism. We should also not forget his even more naive discussion of
free will later in the book. We should get this up on a website somewhere as
a resource (perhaps together with examples of Dawkins' dreadful discussion
of the arguments for the existence of God).

I agree with Fabio about how harmful this can be for our profession, and
think his campaign idea is fantastic.

When I have more time I might try to co-ordinate this stuff on a website.
Anyone got time to beat me to it?

Philip

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 5:28 PM, steve bayne <baynesrb@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hawking ought to have been more circumspect in his appraisal. Philosophy is
> not dead. It is half dead. A comparison of philosophy at present with the
> quality and level attained in previous decades should make this clear.
> Hilbert, Wm. James, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, Husserl, Meinong, Frege,
> all overlap at an interval. A bit later, Carnap, Quine, Strawson, Sellars,
> Chisholm, Austin, Anscombe, Castenada, likewise overlap.
>
>  At present, while there are a number of excellent philosophers who remain
> with us, e.g. Dummett, Putnam, Geach and Kim (just to take a few examples)
> philosophy has fallen upon, comparatively, hard times. One can only
> speculate as to why. I have ideas here, but will forgo the details. Suffice
> it to say that the problem began when it came to be believed by its
> practitioners that all philosophical problems had a common source, one
> requiring therapy, attention to ordinary language, canonical languages,
> physicalism,  possible worlds, truth theory, etc. Once it is realize that
> philosophical problems cannot be addressed as an identifiable species of
> problems, then and (perhaps) only then will the connection to the
> "tradition" (Aristotle, Plato, Locke, Hume, Kant, etc) reinstate the field
> as both viable and relevant. Until such time as it serves its own ends,
> insofar as they can be identified, philosophy will continue to fragment and
> be used as a tool for other ends.
>
> As for Hawking, unlike many of his predecessors; Duhem, Poincare, Einstein,
> Hermann Weyl, Reichenbach (with qualifications), he is a philosophical
> illiterate, as I have, elsewhere, suggested.
>
> Regards
>
> Steven R. Bayne
> www.hist-analytic.org
>
>  Messages to the list are archived at
> http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html. Prolonged discussions
> should be moved to chora: enrol via
> http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/chora.html. Other philosophical
> resources on the Web can be found at http://www.liv.ac.uk/pal.
>
>

Messages to the list are archived at 
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html.
Prolonged discussions should be moved to chora: enrol via
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/chora.html.
Other philosophical resources on the Web can be found at 
http://www.liv.ac.uk/pal.
Re: [Wittrs] INFO: Replies to Hawking

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