[lit-ideas] Re: Heidegger's culpability -- and Tarski's
- From: "atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 20 May 2010 23:32:37 -0500
RP:
>>What adherence to one or the other of them though might have to Heidegger?s
>>political beliefs is a mystery.]
[But, then, lots of things are.] <<
Almost everything is from my perspective. Ignorance isn't just bliss, it's the
cause of awe.
Mike Geary
awfully awesome in Memphis
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Paul
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 5/20/2010 10:50:22 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Heidegger's culpability -- and Tarski's
Donal wrote
Intriguing thread title. Swallowed bait.
The post asks:
"Was Heidegger more culpable for sincerely supporting an ideology that later
was responsible for heinous acts than Tarski for insincerely engaging in
mathematical and logical work?"
The answer is yes. Engaging in maths and logical work, as Tarski did, does not
lead to the murder of millions or promote an inhuman fascistic social
philosophy.
It is also questionable how "_sincere_" is used here: it is usually taken as a
term of approbation - but perhaps not when referring to a sometime Nazi
supporter:-give me insincerity any day. That Tarski doubted the reality of
mathematical objects, in whatever philosophical sense, would not make his work
insincere either - no more than Berkeley was insincere when he looked for what
he couldn't presently perceive.
To even ask whether Tarki's nominalism leaves him "culpable", on the plane on
which MH is culpable, is risible. It would be less fatuous to ask whether the
risks of passive smoking from Einstein's pipe put Einstein in the same bracket
of "culpable" as Hitler with his "sincere" use of death squads.
Of course, if a strong argument can be made, by examining the history and
impact of ideas, that Tarski's math and logic work helped produce murderous
regimes and a senseless World War, then these peepers will be agog.
Lawrence replied (I?m cutting and pasting from his blog)
Donal's outrage would be valid only if something like the
criticisms that Emmanuel Faye advanced were also valid and I am have assumed
they are not based on my own reading of Faye, Heidegger, and others -- and the
further evidence of Albert Kissler (see
http://www.lawrencehelm.com/2010/05/albert-kissler-examining-fayes-smoking.html
). His outrage is valid, in other words, only if he doesn't know or understand
the evidence.
[My?RP?s?comments are enclosed in square brackets like the ones that enclose
this sentence.]
[Donal is not examining the evidence for or against the claim that something
like the tenets of National Socialism can be found in Heidegger?s work, of
whatever period. He is responding to the foolish claim that if Heidegger had
somehow embraced, endorsed, or promoted them, then Tarski would be ?culpable,?
(of what, I?m not clear) just as Heidegger would have been (in some way)
?culpable?) had he somehow endorsed or promoted National Socialism, or at least
some of its principles. This claim is so foolish that I know it can?t be what
Lawrence means.]
[What does he mean? It seems to be this. The claim that Faye made about
Heidegger?s sympathy with National Socialism is false. Had it been true though,
he would have been guilty of something, and guilty in a way that would have, by
parity of reasoning, made Tarski ?guilty? (of insincerity). Yet Heidegger?s
guilt or innocence with respect to his having endorsed, etc., or denounced,
etc., National Socialism has absolutely nothing to do with the ?sincerity? (or
bad faith) of formalist mathematicians. A formalist in mathematics (I?m
simplifying a lot) is someone who doesn?t believe in the existence of numbers
as quasi-Platonic entities that lie outside the ordinary realm of experience.
Simply: numerals do not refer to anything beyond themselves (and so with other
mathematical ?entities?).]
[An oversimplified analogy might be that the names of chess pieces do not refer
to e.g., actual wood, ivory, or gold objects; to point out to someone that a
certain chess piece is the King will only make sense if he or she knows the
rules of chess: it?s the King that may be moved, checked, and so on?and in a
particular game, this piece is the one that obeys these rules. Tossed into a
box with the other pieces, this particular bit of stuff differs only in size
and shape from them.]
[Talented chess players can play by email, or even through exchanging
postcards, and if they set out actual chess pieces in front of them, these will
serve?their arrangement will serve?only as a mnemonic. It would be silly to
imagine someone?s saying that they were insincere?only playing at playing
chess?because they weren?t moving actual wooden pieces about.]
[To say that anyone who doesn?t believe that numbers have a sort of Platonic
existence can?t be doing serious mathematics, mathematical logic,
?meta-mathematics,? or whatever, can only be supported by rhetoric.]
[Formalism, finitism, intuitionism, and realism are all forms of mathematics.
Each has its limitations and each has achieved something worthwhile. What
adherence to one or the other of them though might have to Heidegger?s
political beliefs is a mystery.]
[But, then, lots of things are.]
Robert Paul
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