Btw, Stephen Hawking last made front page news here with his claim that
intelligent machines could bring about the destruction of the human race.
No report clarified whether Hawking was saying this destruction would
result from our use of these machines in war or whether he was suggesting
the machines might turn on us and wage war on us. If the latter, it is very
possible that it is an uncritical "materialism" that underpins his claim -
for if machines lack a W2 and access to a W3 how, outside of our
programming of them, could they ever turn on us?
*I wouldn't know about that, but he doesn't sound uncritically
materialistic to me. I presume that by intelligent machines he meant some
future machines that would have mental life of sorts, and access to
knowledge.
I do know that he and Jarred Diamond urged that we should stop emitting
messages to space trying to contact extraterrestrial civilizations, as this
could be dangerous. Which seems to make sense, seeing that the inhabitants
of Terra del Fuego were probably not well advised to alert a
technologically more advanced civilization of their existence.
O.K.
On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 at 10:19 AM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
To which I would add that to me at least, chasing the same argumentsround and round like hamsters in a spinning bowl becomes tedious. >
Haven't seen hamsters chasing round in a spinning bowl but am sure if I
did I could find it interesting.
As to the fundamental questions in philosophy, it is not a fault of this
list but in their character that we end up chasing round and round the same
or similar arguments.
But there can be increased understanding through this. For example, iirc,
not so long ago John suggested that "materialism" is true (and I,
predictably enough, suggested this does not fit well with any view that
gives autonomy to W2 and W3, and pointed out that even the law operates
with distinctions between physical/material and non-material entities; both
inconclusive counter-arguments of course). We may not be able to get
anything like a conclusive answer to whether some form of "materialism" is
true but in the process we may advance our understanding of the 'problems
facing materialism', and also of what a tenable form of "materialism" would
look like (it might have to transcend the view that all is 'matter/atoms
and the void' and accept forces like gravity). We can advance in
understanding how inconclusive the arguments are. And advance in
understanding the strangeness and wonder of the world when reflected on
philosophically.
Still I am sympathetic to the view that wisdom can be found outside
philosophy, and perhaps more important wisdom than can be found in it. I
think there is wisdom of a profound sort in Beethoven's 'Holy Song of
Thanksgiving', though it is greater than any attempt to express it in
words. And I know a four year old who brings home the value and wonder and
life more than most philosophy ever does: how he teaches me this is hard to
say, but I feel he does.
Donal
*Btw, Stephen Hawking last made front page news here with his claim that
intelligent machines could bring about the destruction of the human race.
No report clarified whether Hawking was saying this destruction would
result from our use of these machines in war or whether he was suggesting
the machines might turn on us and wage war on us. If the latter, it is very
possible that it is an uncritical "materialism" that underpins his claim -
for if machines lack a W2 and access to a W3 how, outside of our
programming of them, could they ever turn on us?
On Saturday, 11 April 2015, 8:34, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
"Mike's complaint and yours seem to come from opposite ends; he is
looking for answers to deep existential questions such as why we are here,
while you are looking for solutions to practical problems."
No, I wouldn't say that. I remain interested in deep existential
questions. I no longer believe, as a younger and more naive me once did,
that answers to them can be found in philosophical debate. My pragmatism is
colored by strains of mysticism, Daoist and Zen, but also, I am sure, owes
much to the pietism of the Lutheran Church in which I was raised. That
pietism primed me to be receptive when, I must have been around twelve or
thirteen, I was reading a compendium of scriptures from the world's
religions and stumbled across a passage attributed to an apocryphal text
called The Second Isaiah. I remember the words as follows,
The Lord said to Cyrus the Persian, "Shall the clay say to the potter who
molds it, what makes thou? Let the potsherds of the earth speak to the
potsherds of the earth."
That said, I do not despise philosophy. I see philosophers as I see
mathematicians, smart individuals who try to work out rigorously the
implications of abstract assumptions. Whether the conclusions to which they
come bear usefully on any concrete problem we face depends on the problem
in question and the material conditions in which we address it. Their value
cannot be demonstrated by referring to the abstractions alone. To which I
would add that to me at least, chasing the same arguments round and round
like hamsters in a spinning bowl becomes tedious.
John
On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 at 3:52 PM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I have found the discussions of Popper somewhat helpful as to the
understanding of science at least, others less so. On the other hand, I
wonder if all intellectual pursuits have to be conducted on the model of
practical science. I have read some of Stephen Hawking recently and I have
been struck by how philosophical it is, as the matter of fact. Mike's
complaint and yours seem to come from opposite ends; he is looking for
answers to deep existential questions such as why we are here, while you
are looking for solutions to practical problems. To put it somewhat
simplistically, Mike expects philosophy to replace God, while you seem to
expect it to make vacuum cleaners. It may be that the disappointment is the
result of exaggerated and / or misplaced expectations. On the other hand, I
admit that I often find philosophy tedious, but it may say more about me
than about philosophy. (Although I believe that philosophy took the wrong
turn at some point in the 20th century.)
O.K.
On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 at 3:52 AM, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 9:46 AM, Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx
wrote:
Philosophy has fascinated me since high school, through college and even
somewhat today. It has fascinated me because it seemed to feed into my
desire (need) to know if there is any reason or goal or purpose to our
existence or is it all just a phantasmagorical dance of electromagnetic
radiation? I had hoped that buried in the arcane propositions of
philosophy there might me a rational response to my need to know.
Mike,
I was fascinated in the same way. What life has taught me, as I see it, is
that confining "rational response" to absolute certainty is fundamentally
irrational. We live in an uncertain but not entirely unpredictable world.
At the end of the day, the search for meaning is not that old adolescent
dream, a quest for the Holy Grail, but a matter of accumulating heuristics
that mostly work until they don't, then asking how they need to be changed
to fit new circumstances. In science, they call the heuristics theories and
try systematically to falsify and refine them. That is what science does
and, on available evidence, does pretty well.
Does going round and round in circles from Grice to Popper to Wittgenstein
improve our understanding. Not as far as I can see. After months and years
of the same debates, the same old chestnuts are hauled hot and roasted
again, time after time after time. Which to me spells waste of time. That
is why I now return here mainly for the poetry provided by Helm, Geary, and
Richie's chickens and the occasional word of wisdom from Robert Paul. For
thoughts, that is, that may be fleeting, but resonate in interesting ways.
Cheers,
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
