Epistemology defeats itself with its own premisese

[The Voice of Time]

No. I'm talking about Peter the Great

Ok, at least explains the poor French writing x)

[QMan]

Woops. I was thinking of Peter the Great.
Sorry for the mixup.

If I also don't remember wrong, he made several great achievements throughout his life. He founded or at least started the process of building the first science university in Russia (which was a real great achievement, the German mathematician Euler for instance moved there and was hugely productive throughout his life, he's considered one of the greatest mathematicians in history, I've been reading about him in a work on a prime number theory), he built the first mighty Russian navy and he defeated the Swedish Empire in the battle of Poltava effectively marking the slow decline of the Swedish Empire back into mainland Sweden (and later also the loss of Finland). I think also it was the battle of Poltava which gave him the tittle "Great" although I'm quite unsure about that, great because the Swedish king was seen as unbeatable on the battlefield, Sweden at its prime was a huge powerhouse in Europe, fielding a peasant army well endowed in weaponry and skill and with his own genius had been taking victory after victory.

Actually, Euler was Swiss, born in Basil, Switzerland.

[The Voice of Time]

He spoke German

[MGL]

You are primarily drawn to philosophy because....

I am afraid your last response did not seem to address my questions and by offering an explanation of why I am asking them only left me more confused about the point you are making. Can I summarise you as follows?


1) If we were to really examine our conventional beliefs and assumptions, we would ultimately rejects moral values, because they are nothing more than culturally acquired rules of behaviour and only endorsed by us through fear of punishment.

2) We should realise ( thanks to modern science ) that all the axioms that ground our moral beliefs (and all conventional\academic philosophical discourse) are based on the wrong-headed assumption that we are a disembodied mind.

3) All human behaviour is ultimately in reality selfish because it only serves to propagate a person's DNA.

[Hobbes' Choice]

"Epistemology is an exercise which attempts to expose the underlying assumptions we make about claims to knowledge. "

Some aspects of philosophical epistemology do this. But this statement is a caricature, designed to assert the claim in the title of the thread.
But this caricature is a somewhat myopic and limited refection on a very wide topic, which stretches from mundane considerations about the value of evidence to full blown reservations about the extreme limitations of human perception in a complex universe.

For example might be as simple as calculating the degree of error of a RC14 analysis, or asking whether or not the sample might have been contaminated and has given a inaccurate result. All this can be achieved by a full understanding of the "underlying assumptions", which need not be "exposed", in some enigmatic and sinister way as they are on the table before any RC14 test is made.

[Mark Question]

philosophy is thinking about thinking. philosophical epistemology is thinking about correct thinking. thinking is premise for thinking about thinking. philosophical logic is thinking about rules of thinking. logic of words and, mathematics, logic of numbers. philosophical epistemology is thinking about rules of correct thinking, philosophical logic. thinking is premise for all philosophies like logic, epistemology, semantical encyclopedies or empirical sciences...

what is "weird", "thinking" or "premise"? a philosophical question.

[NielsBohr]

1. Assume there exists "minds" which are containers of "knowledge"
2. Assume this knowledge is communicated in the form of English sentences.
3. Assume English sentences are pure claims unadulterated by grammar or culture
4. Assume there is a group of people who will make "propositions" in written format.
5. Assume that "minds" exist transcendentally.
6. Assume "sense perceptions" exist transcendentally.
7. Assume "propositions" exist independently of their instantiations in language or by human mouths or human writing tools (pens, pencils, chalk).
8. Assume the "mind" is a tabula rasa, upon which the transcendent sense perceptions act.

Hi Kuznetzova,

I don't want to make a critic of all your list, but only a few:

• 2) yes, the attempts in expressing the phenomenons in a natural langage (and before: to understand them in it) is a great problem in some domains.
• 1) and 5), trying to eliminate the mind in (physical) sciences is as trying to understand chemistry with only Legos... How could you understand a domain - moreover barely expressible naturally - by eliminating the idea of mind from the dictionary ? I think it is not possible. Mind is assumed as any term of the dictionary to exist - what doesn't mean that we want to call every possible word but only the necessary ones - so it is not as if epistemology had to be construct by science. I believe you make the confusion here. If we would like really to understand a domain, it appears obvious that we have to call a higher level of abstraction to understand the domain, and not a lower.

Obviously, you cannot explain science only with the same science, as you cannot "explain Lego construction only with Legos". (If you try, you will at best re-make the wheel. And with your own decisions which also are not of the domain of science themselves.)

See Goedel theorem about this problematic.

[Arising_uk]

...
See Godel theorem about this problematic.

Never really understood this theorem but doesn't it just show that Maths and Logic are not the same thing? As as far as I understood it Russell logicized Number and Godel mathematised his logic and then used mathematical operations to produced what he said were true propositions in the logic that could not be proved from the logic but my question is then how did he define 'true' in this sense, if it wasn't logically true what truth was it?

[NielsBohr]

Good question Arising_UK,

As I see Goedel's theorem, although a formalism can be well construct and coherent in itself, it cannot prevent some "elementary truths" of having no foundation in theirselves.

We can try to find their constitution by using another formalism, more abstract, and not less abstract, a "meta-formalism" regarding the first.

By continuation, the more abstract formalism you can find is only about to be the mind itself...

In the last paragraph of his post, VoiceOfTime is about to tell so:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13616&start=15#p176596

Who I confirm more explicitly (without knowing at this datum that VoiceOfTime wrote his way) in my answer of next page.

[Arising_uk]

Good question Arising_UK,

As I see Goedel's theorem, although a formalism can be well construct and coherent in itself, it cannot prevent some "elementary truths" of having no foundation in theirselves.

Do you mean 'elementary propositions'? If so then Wittgenstein agrees with you. But I thought Godel did something slightly different, as he used one formalism, Maths, to axiomatise Russell's logical axiomatisation of Number and produced 'propositions' that he said were true but could not be proved in the logic. What I'm confused about is how they are considered as being 'true'? As it can't be logical truth so what truth is it?

We can try to find their constitution by using another formalism, more abstract, and not less abstract, a "meta-formalism" regarding the first.

Hmmm...Logic itself constructs such meta-proofs so why 'another formalism'? Can you give me a simp example as I'm confused.

By continuation, the more abstract formalism you can find is only about to be the mind itself. ...

Not sure what you mean by this? Psychology?

[NielsBohr]

Arising_uk,

-No, I was really considering some truths. I do not know all the historic work of Goedel, but it seems to be extensible to any formalism. The reason is: it would lead to a circular reasoning. It has at most consistance, but it cannot "proof" itself under the proof considerations of the same language.
A reasoning self referring for the short:
a hypothesis H lead to an inference B, which lead to a conclusion C.
C may be a simpler way to express H (as a solution of a problem instruction).

So globally, as you re-get H, you have: H<-->H,
or if C is simpler C<-->C.

There is a big deal in understanding which kind is a demonstration, and I am surely not able to summarize all the ideas about it. I only had severe troubles in trying to understand the notion of demonstration.

In demonstrative geometry - I was 15 years old - I did not understand how we could consider a Hypothesis as True! because the literal meaning of a hypothesis is everything else than a truth...

Generally, a demonstration has the work to make obvious the understanding of an idea, to let it be admitted. But it is often not the case, as the demonstration can seem more complex than the idea, and lead to some corollary.

I remember also when reading a demonstration of some algebra in physics, I began to misunderstand the sense of an implication in a long demonstration (some of the arrows were bijective, what did not help a lot).


-I inferred about a more abstract formalism to try to explain some truths, because in formal logic, you do not have even the time notion.
The time may be understood as a principe of reality - so seeming for concrete - but is surely for me, a human invention.

It seem obvious for me, that the sense of a demonstration would have at least a composant of time.

But as the time is not in the ideas of logic, this means that he general process to understand is to get a higher level of abstraction.

Finally, psychology... why not. Even (meta-)mathematicians were about to go in quest of informations in psychology, to understand if the paradoxes emerging in some "elementary" sets theory, could also be persistant in other theories.

The purpose - according to Douglas Hofstadter - was to understand how eliminate some causes of the emergences of paradoxes, as self-referencies. And had this way to understand how most brains functioned, etc...

-My personal purpose:
In an extreme consideration, I think this is the faith which recognize the truths.

[Ginkgo]

...
See Godel theorem about this problematic.

Never really understood this theorem but doesn't it just show that Maths and Logic are not the same thing? As as far as I understood it Russell logicized Number and Godel mathematised his logic and then used mathematical operations to produced what he said were true propositions in the logic that could not be proved from the logic but my question is then how did he define 'true' in this sense, if it wasn't logically true what truth was it?

I think Russell's criticism was specifically aimed at Frege's set theory, but as Niels points out Godel is relevant as well. Basically I think Russell was pointing out the problem of a collection, or class of things being a member, or not being a member of itself. Proof by contradiction could show an axiom to be false.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox

[Mark Question]

...
See Godel theorem about this problematic.

Never really understood this theorem but doesn't it just show that Maths and Logic are not the same thing? As as far as I understood it Russell logicized Number and Godel mathematised his logic and then used mathematical operations to produced what he said were true propositions in the logic that could not be proved from the logic but my question is then how did he define 'true' in this sense, if it wasn't logically true what truth was it?

I think Russell's criticism was specifically aimed at Frege's set theory, but as Niels points out Godel is relevant as well. Basically I think Russell was pointing out the problem of a collection, or class of things being a member, or not being a member of itself. Proof by contradiction could show an axiom to be false.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox

russel did some logical thinking and found out that there is logically no class, without being a member of itself. paradox means illogical.

[Ginkgo]

russel did some logical thinking and found out that there is logically no class, without being a member of itself. paradox means illogical.

Yes, so one solution to this problem was to create additional axioms which excluded any class as being a member of itself.

[Mark Question]

Arising_uk,

-No, I was really considering some truths. I do not know all the historic work of Goedel, but it seems to be extensible to any formalism. The reason is: it would lead to a circular reasoning. It has at most consistance, but it cannot "proof" itself under the proof considerations of the same language.
A reasoning self referring for the short:
a hypothesis H lead to an inference B, which lead to a conclusion C.
C may be a simpler way to express H (as a solution of a problem instruction).

So globally, as you re-get H, you have: H<-->H,
or if C is simpler C<-->C.

There is a big deal in understanding which kind is a demonstration, and I am surely not able to summarize all the ideas about it. I only had severe troubles in trying to understand the notion of demonstration.

In demonstrative geometry - I was 15 years old - I did not understand how we could consider a Hypothesis as True! because the literal meaning of a hypothesis is everything else than a truth...

Generally, a demonstration has the work to make obvious the understanding of an idea, to let it be admitted. But it is often not the case, as the demonstration can seem more complex than the idea, and lead to some corollary.

I remember also when reading a demonstration of some algebra in physics, I began to misunderstand the sense of an implication in a long demonstration (some of the arrows were bijective, what did not help a lot).


-I inferred about a more abstract formalism to try to explain some truths, because in formal logic, you do not have even the time notion.
The time may be understood as a principe of reality - so seeming for concrete - but is surely for me, a human invention.

It seem obvious for me, that the sense of a demonstration would have at least a composant of time.

But as the time is not in the ideas of logic, this means that he general process to understand is to get a higher level of abstraction.

Finally, psychology... why not. Even (meta-)mathematicians were about to go in quest of informations in psychology, to understand if the paradoxes emerging in some "elementary" sets theory, could also be persistant in other theories.

The purpose - according to Douglas Hofstadter - was to understand how eliminate some causes of the emergences of paradoxes, as self-referencies. And had this way to understand how most brains functioned, etc...

-My personal purpose:
In an extreme consideration, I think this is the faith which recognize the truths.

Logic is the metalanguage behind other languages. Logic is borders of our languages borders as borders of our world and truth.
You can logically talk and think time,space, donuts and other stuff and their relations.
there is different kind of languages also in computers and humans are not computers.