Tag Archives: Sabine Hossenfelder

On Being Human in the Age of Humanity

August 9, 2021 – 11:48 am

This is about an essay called “Agency in the Anthropocene: How much choice do you actually have?” (Daily Philosophy, August 4, 2021). I fall in the gap in age between the author and Jeff Bezos, who (the author says) is three years her senior.

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Posted in absolute presuppositions, Criteriological Science, Freedom, Midgley, Philosophy of History | Also tagged , , , | Comments (3)

Mathematics and Logic

October 13, 2020 – 8:55 am

Large parts of this post are taken up with two subjects:

  1. The notion (due to Collingwood) of criteriological sciences, logic being one of them.

  2. Gödel’s theorems of completeness and incompleteness, as examples of results in the science of logic.

Like the most recent in the current spate of mathematics posts, the present one has arisen from material originally drafted for the first post in this series.

In that post, I defined mathematics as the science whose findings are proved by deduction. This definition does not say what mathematics is about. We can say however what logic is about: it is about mathematics quâ deduction, and more generally about reasoning as such. This makes logic a criteriological science, because logic seeks, examines, clarifies and limits the criteria whereby we can make deductions. As examples of this activity, Gödel’s theorems are, in a crude sense to be refined below, that

  • everything true in all possible mathematical worlds can be deduced;

  • some things true in the world of numbers can never be deduced;

  • the latter theorem is one of those things.

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Posted in Aristotle, Collingwood, Criteriological Science, Education, Euclid, Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy of Mathematics, Plato | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (7)

On the Idea of History

October 20, 2019 – 6:48 am

Note added, March 10–11, 2021. The bulk of this post concerns race in the theory of history, particularly the theory attributed to Johann Gotfried Herder (1744–1803). Not having read Herder for myself, I rely on the accounts of

  • R. G. Collingwood in § 2, “Herder,” of Part III of The Idea of History (1946),

  • Michael Forster in “Johann Gottfried von Herder,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (summer 2019).

Somebody like Herder may introduce race as an hypothesis to explain history, but ultimately the hypothesis fails, by denying us the freedom that is essential to history as such. Nonetheless, Forster defends Herder as having

an impartial concern for all human beings … Herder does also insist on respecting, preserving, and advancing national groupings. However, this is entirely unalarming,

because, for one thing, “The ‘nation’ in question is not racial but linguistic and cultural.”

Change Collingwood’s word “race” to “linguistic and cultural grouping” then. I think his conclusion remains sound: “Once Herder’s theory of race is accepted, there is no escaping the Nazi marriage laws.”

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Posted in Collingwood, Euclid, History, Mathematics, Philosophy of History | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Antitheses

December 13, 2018 – 10:18 am

This is an attempt at a dialectical understanding of freedom and responsibility, punishment and forgiveness, things like that. My text is a part of the Gospel, though I attribute no special supernatural power to this. I shall refer also to the Dialogues of Plato.

The Antitheses are the six parallel teachings, delivered by Jesus of Nazareth in the Sermon on the Mount, as recounted in Chapter 5 of the Gospel According to St Matthew, starting at verse 21. I summarize:

  1. Do not kill people; do not even get angry with them.

  2. Do not commit adultery; do not even fantasize about it.

  3. In divorce, follow the established procedure; do not even divorce.

  4. Do not forswear yourself; do not even swear.

  5. Keep retribution commensurate with the crime; do not even seek retribution.

  6. Love your neighbor; love even your enemy.

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Posted in Collingwood, dialectic, Freedom, Galileo, New Leviathan, overlap of classes, Philosophy, Plato, Science, Stoicism | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (23)