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Hypothetically, if all historical philosophy was erased, which ideas would quickly reemerge, and how might they be different?
I acknowledge the contributions of the “Great Philosophers” of the past. But given what we now know of the universe scientifically, who would make the cut with today’s limit of 140 characters?
“I think I am, therefore, I am. I think.” - George Carlin
Hypothetically, if all historical philosophy was erased, which ideas would quickly reemerge, and how might they be different?
I acknowledge the contributions of the “Great Philosophers” of the past. But given what we now know of the universe scientifically, who would make the cut with today’s limit of 140 characters?
“I think I am, therefore, I am. I think.” - George Carlin
What a compelling question. Since philosophers through history have one-by-one either added to and lifted, or detracted from a seemingly teleological progression toward modern forms of scientific methodology. My wild guess would be that few of their ideas would be reemerge. Surprisingly few. Many new ones would take their place, but obviously the new ones would not be pointing in the direction of modern scientific ways, since that goal, so to speak, would have already been achieved.
My wild guess would be that few of their ideas would be reemerge. Surprisingly few.
This was my intuition as well.
- Some concept of mind / body duality seems inevitable. I consider the mind a manifestation of our biology, but as emergent properties go, this one is spectacular.
- Objective reality. But given relativity and quantum mechanics, reality seems even harder to understand than ever before.
- Ethics (I don’t like “morality” - too selfish a perspective), but based on Game Theory instead of imaginary father figures.
Some concept of God/afterlife would reemerge, even in the absence of any historical referent. It would be the default position for those who have lived unfortunate lives, and for those who don’t want life to end.
The question is missing some information. Would all science be erased as well? If not, I don’t think we can assume that philosophy would re-emerge as before since so much of our thinking is influenced by our relationship to nature—which changes with technology. For instance, our knowledge of medicine, astronomy, zoology etc. makes a lot of early philosophy obsolete… I would hope we wouldn’t regress to the ideas of Thales, Ptolemy, Anaximander, Hippocrates and so forth.
Presumably, the philosophy of simple self preservation by means of social altruism would re-emerge since any society without such sensibilities wouldn’t survive for long.
601, would you consider narrowing the scope of your OP? If so, you may want to propose a modern day Adam and Eve. Or maybe a community of a few dozen or few hundred people who share a lack of idealism and delusion about the nature of the universe. They have diverse educations, and full access to the world’s libraries. What do you think?
I suspect that morality as practiced today would be gone for good if such a community were given the task of regrowing humanity.
I was hoping the would-be philosophers here would jump in with what they thought was still valid philosophy in the information age.
The profound inversion in the philosophical climate began with Darwin, and has been reinforced by science ever since. Earlier attempts to understand virtually required the supernatural, as too many complex phenomena where otherwise inexplicable. But we crossed a tipping point, where now “all things emerge” explains enough to confidently allow the remaining unknowns to be classified as either unknowable or yet to be understood.
As pattern matching, agency imbuing creatures (our best mutation), we are loath to surrender the why question at the extreme, as it has served us so well generally.
I envy the delusional hope of the religious, but foolishly prefer awareness. So faced with pointless suffering, and a naturally selected fear of an inevitable death, I laugh at the irony of an emergent mind that can answer any question but that most desired.
I was hoping the would-be philosophers here would jump in with what they thought was still valid philosophy in the information age.
The profound inversion in the philosophical climate began with Darwin, and has been reinforced by science ever since. Earlier attempts to understand virtually required the supernatural, as too many complex phenomena where otherwise inexplicable. But we crossed a tipping point, where now “all things emerge” explains enough to confidently allow the remaining unknowns to be classified as either unknowable or yet to be understood.
As pattern matching, agency imbuing creatures (our best mutation), we are loath to surrender the why question at the extreme, as it has served us so well generally.
I envy the delusional hope of the religious, but foolishly prefer awareness. So faced with pointless suffering, and a naturally selected fear of an inevitable death, I laugh at the irony of an emergent mind that can answer any question but that most desired.
“All things emerge” is no more of an explanation than “God did it.”
A very good discussion related to your interest is Roland Omnès book Quantum Philosophy.
“All things emerge” is no more of an explanation than “God did it.”
I beg to differ. With ONLY the presumption of the big bang (and arguably abiogenesis), all things have emerged through time via the nature of physics. The details of this explanation are not trivial (including the time and physics concepts), and have taken centuries of scientific breakthroughs to achieve (evolution being the pivotal component).
Of course, for most this is an unsatisfactory explanation (especially the unknowable initial cause), but I consider that a topic to discuss at your next therapy session.
“All things emerge” is no more of an explanation than “God did it.”
I beg to differ. With ONLY the presumption of the big bang (and arguably abiogenesis), all things have emerged through time via the nature of physics. The details of this explanation are not trivial (including the time and physics concepts), and have taken centuries of scientific breakthroughs to achieve (evolution being the pivotal component).
Of course, for most this is an unsatisfactory explanation (especially the unknowable initial cause), but I consider that a topic to discuss at your next therapy session.
It is not an explanation because it gives no mechanism for this to happen. We can say that new forms appear via evolutionary processes of replication and selection, but that is only a beginning of an explanation and doesn’t deal with how things came to be before the advent of replicators. Evolution doesn’t deal with the origin of life, only with how life has evolved since then. There is work on origins of life as well, looking at self-organizing chemical cycles and such, but those don’t have much to say about the early universe. There are different meanings given to the word emergence. It can mean nothing more than than as the early universe expanded new things appeared (e.g., light when the density of the primodial soup dropped low enough that photons could decouple), but it can also mean the appearance of qualitatively new things from lower levels of material existence. Use of the word “emergence” is just trying to solve a problem by naming it (a magical attitude) - it’s not an explanation until you can give a testable theory of the details and that doesn’t exist as yet.
There are different meanings given to the word emergence.
Maybe this is the source of confusion. I mean to use “emerge” in this sense: from Latin emergent- ‘arising from,’ from the verb emergere (see emerge).
A philosophical paradigm shift occurred in the way we think about the universe, life and such.
Earlier (pre Darwin), most thought things were “made” (created by a supernatural will), but now we know things only “grow,” i.e. emerge from a previous state via natural processes - no magic involved. Abiogenesis is tricky, but after seeing Julia Child make primordial soup at the Smithsonian Institution (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pt0rIZ3ZNE), I expect we will eventually find the right recipe.
So with Chaos Theory (random + order) and evolution (a special case of Chaos) we have an explanation in principal, and science has finally provided most of the details.
This is not a theorum, but an observation. The only prediction I make is psychological, and I am curious how this changes philosophy.
There are different meanings given to the word emergence.
Maybe this is the source of confusion. I mean to use “emerge” in this sense: from Latin emergent- ‘arising from,’ from the verb emergere (see emerge).
A philosophical paradigm shift occurred in the way we think about the universe, life and such.
Earlier (pre Darwin), most thought things were “made” (created by a supernatural will), but now we know things only “grow,” i.e. emerge from a previous state via natural processes - no magic involved. Abiogenesis is tricky, but after seeing Julia Child make primordial soup at the Smithsonian Institution (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pt0rIZ3ZNE), I expect we will eventually find the right recipe.
So with Chaos Theory (random + order) and evolution (a special case of Chaos) we have an explanation in principal, and science has finally provided most of the details.
This is not a theorum, but an observation. The only prediction I make is psychological, and I am curious how this changes philosophy.
But science has not provided most of the details. Rather, science has to date provided the tools that we can use to eventually try and get at the details (with perhaps some more things that have to be discovered first). Also, evolution is not a special case of chaos theory. Chaos theory is a mathematical theory that has to do with the behavior of solutions to simple differential or iterated difference equations. Evolution is a theory of the way that populations of replicators change over time. In some cases, equations that have chaotic behavior can be used to construct models of evolutionary processes. In other cases evolutionary processes can be modeled with things like agent based simulations.
As far as your original question, I do recommend the Roland Omnes book: he gives a very interesting discussion of what he believes is an essential change required (but not instantiated as yet) in philosophy.
Do you mean to imply that science has not yet eliminated the supernatural as an explanation for natural phenomena (excluding the Planck era)?
Scientific advance has exposed that there is no meaning, purpose or point for existence. This presents a serious challenge to modern philosophers (and shrinks as well).
burt - 08 November 2009 05:44 PM
Also, evolution is not a special case of chaos theory.
I am keen to discuss this further, but maybe it needs it’s own thread.
burt - 08 November 2009 05:44 PM
As far as your original question, I do recommend the Roland Omnes book: he gives a very interesting discussion of what he believes is an essential change required (but not instantiated as yet) in philosophy.
Scanning the ad-stracts, this does look interesting, how does he rescue locality?
Do you mean to imply that science has not yet eliminated the supernatural as an explanation for natural phenomena (excluding the Planck era)?
Science eliminated appeal to the supernatural from the beginning: science looks for explanations of the natural world based on reason without appeal to supernatural entities. That doesn’t mean the things supernatural exist or don’t exist, science doesn’t have much to say about that. It does allow us to eliminate literal interpretations on many supernatural claims by providing natural explanations, but we can’t accept those explanations as being 100% certain because science doesn’t give that sort of certainty.
601 - 09 November 2009 01:04 AM
Scientific advance has exposed that there is no meaning, purpose or point for existence. This presents a serious challenge to modern philosophers (and shrinks as well).
No, science has nothing to say about meaning and purpose to existence. There have been various discussions of meaning on this forum and only the religious types have claimed that without religion there is no meaning to existence.
601 - 09 November 2009 01:04 AM
burt - 08 November 2009 05:44 PM
Also, evolution is not a special case of chaos theory.
I am keen to discuss this further, but maybe it needs it’s own thread.
I already indicated why this is the case.
601 - 09 November 2009 01:04 AM
burt - 08 November 2009 05:44 PM
As far as your original question, I do recommend the Roland Omnes book: he gives a very interesting discussion of what he believes is an essential change required (but not instantiated as yet) in philosophy.
Scanning the ad-stracts, this does look interesting, how does he rescue locality?
Why is there any need to “rescue” locality, this is off topic. If you want to find out what he has to say, read the book, I’m not going to waste my time trying to summarize something you could easily do for yourself.
