At 2:14 PM -0800 on 2/7/00, Tim May wrote:
> In summary, Nietzsche was the first major philosopher to address the deep
> questions about what humans really are. Not as biological beings, not as
> cultural beings, but as thinking beings in a world where there is no
> fundamental purpose to the universe.
Point taken.
I was certainly throwing a bomb into the room (moi?) by saying something
dreadful about Neitzsche that probably didn't need saying so forcefully. I
won't even try to re-waffle, my, um, pre-bomb waffle. Or something...
I also quite agree with Tim about the ultimate outcome of analytic
philosophy after Russell and Whitehead crashed and burned (Wittgenstein,
et.al., sheesh...), with the exception, of course, of G�del, who solved the
problem with actual mathematics, as it should have been done.
Personally, I like philosophy for a lot of reasons, I even majored in it,
back in my state-school, liberal-until-graduation days. (Recreationally, of
course; my minor being various psychochemicals and beer, my excuse being a
proposed career in the law, something almost as useful to society as
psychochemicals and beer are...)
Not the least of those reasons, however, is that philosophy is where an
enormous amount of *science* comes from, sooner or later. Quite literally,
"new stuff"; reality, ab initio.
To me, philosophy, more than any other discipline, any other "art" -- and
itself contrary to widely-held public misconception -- is about turning
intuition into fact, about turning reason into materiality.
In the same way that nobody can explain why mathematics describes the
universe, when people abandon thinking about their own science at its
boundry layer, derisively saying things like "but that's a problem for
philosophers", they're missing the point, because that's where things get
interesting. As Kuhn(?) observes, when scientists start talking philosophy,
that's when the world changes. Saying that what's down a black hole doesn't
"exist" because we can never *know* it, is to me, at least, a great kind of
problem to think about, to sharpen one's wits on, even though it will
certainly fall to a scientist, probably dabbling philosophical, to
eventually answer it.
Ultimitely, my interest in philosophy is a deeply personal one, even, a
frankly symptomatic one, symptomatic of my interest in lots of *different*
"new stuff", and preferrably all at once. It's one of the reaons I like the
net, and this list, so much.
Someone said that philosophy is the study of the most *general*, and that's
certainly true of my approach to life. It doesn't make you rich, certainly,
(well, so far... :-)) but it does make life interesting. My resulting, and
some say fanatical :-), interest in internet bearer settlement, in
financial cryptography, in the intersection, until Chaum combined them in
the 1980's, of two heretofore utterly different disciplines, is also
symptomatic of my way of looking at the world. And, if that makes me an
intellectual gourmand, like a certain nameless monarch, subject to the
ridicule, pardon the heavy-lifting, of "effete snobs" like a pair of
nameless nyms around here, fine. Not that I think I'm nearly at par with
it, I still think I'm in fine company, as the odd discursive gem like Tim's
recent one attests.
So, to me, it is this very creation of reality out of whole cloth that is
*exactly* why I absolutely resent the relativist turn philosophy has taken
this past century. Relativist *and* collectivist.
Relativist, and collectivist, *and*, dammit, French. (oh, my?) :-).
Anyway, philosophy can do better than that. So can the French. :-).
Finally, I do understand that, while it makes considerable apparent sense
to assume that there is no "point" to the universe, it seems to me that
there *is* morality -- not religion and superstition, not some mythical
bearded old guy in the sky saying "you die, you don't, you die, you don't",
because, frankly, the older I get the less of the devine I believe -- but
actual morals, just as most people commonly, intuitively, understand them.
I don't think that Nietzsche abandoned that idea, even when he's considered
most uncharitably, as most modern leftist idologues are wont to do.
And, yes, it may even turn out that, at bottom, our perception of morality
is all biochemistry. I'm practically convinced of it now, not only for
obvious personal reasons, but certainly before there's physical proof of
the assertion. But, even that kind of morality still has, for the purpose
of evolutionary survival, a *value* of some kind -- value being another
thing that philosophy tries to think about, and that most "post-moderns"
and "extistensialists" only laugh at, like so many modern-day sophists.
That's why I deride it as literature, and not science, just like I deride
Freudian "psychonalytics" as the same. In fact, calling it "literature" is
a disservice to actual literature; Shakespeare, for instance. :-).
As a postscript, and not at all on topic for this thread, <plug> I hope to
see some of you in Anguilla week after next <http://www.fc00.ai>. </plug>
If you want, email me while I'm down there, I'll buy you a drink, and we
can talk about the fuzzy edges of reality, cryptographic, financial, or
other.
Or, maybe, we can just go sailing, because I intend to do a *lot* of that
this year. I've been lusting after the breeze in Anguilla for 4 years now,
wondering when I was going to be able get out and romp around in it with a
sailboat, and now I'm going to get my wish. As I hope you'll see when when
you get down there, I think I'll have gotten my wish in spades. This is,
ladies and gentlemen, is going to be a *great* FC conference, even if you
don't sail. :-).
Cheers,
RAH
(Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends speak French. Hell, I even
<plug> charter their catamarans <http://www.sunyachts.com></plug>... :-))
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
