Physical Events, Physics and Metaphysics

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by Caroline

One should feel something Kennethamy no matter what.

I would hope so. Otherwise, you might be dead, and that would make you feel awful.

[odenskrigare]

what is the utility of death

economists should look at the (ex-)lives of people who have committed suicide to figure this out

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by jeeprs

Alright I too am being polemical. Of course Western Philosophy is splintered into a million fragments now and besides the postmodernists distrust all grand narratives. But insofar as 'wisdom' really stood for something, and the Greeks had some common notion of what that was, and there was a tradition in which it was passed down, then yes: I think there was a mission. I am not highly schooled in the whole tradition, but I feel that Socrates' attitude, the kind of questions he asked, and the kind of man he was, is still relevant today and is not currently very well represented in the tradition he helped to spawn. I think the retreat into 'scientism', into only dealing with things that can be shown in the lab, really does fall short of what philosophy ought to be. I feel it really ought to make you ask questions about who you are and what your life is really about, and so on. And frankly I don't see much of that in Western philosophy any more.

So - yes.

But Socrates is very well represented by the analytic tradition. His method of philosophizing was philosophical analysis.
Wittgenstein wrote that philosophy is not a theory, it is an activity. I think he was right, and that you (and Ortega) think it is a theory about how the world is. And that is confusing philosophy with science, which is attempting to build theories about the world, and succeeding very well. In that way, your view is closer to scientism than is mine. The questions you think that philosophy should ask (and presumably answer) are pseudo-scientific questions. The scientific version of those questions, and real questions, with real answers, are being asked, and answered, by psychologists and cognitive scientists, and anthropologists, and sociologists. The job of philosophy (mission, if you like) is clarification through analysis, and the goal is understanding (wisdom if you like). And that is in the Socratic tradition.

[longknowledge]

Originally Posted by longknowledge

Since metaphysics is a branch of philosophy, metaphysics of science is a branch of philosophy of science. You also have an ethics of science, an epistemology of science, etc. However, I recall that Ortega himself was disdainful of using the expression "philosophy of . . .". I'll check out his reasons and let you know what they were.

I found the passage I was looking for in Ortega's works that deals with "philosophy of [a discipline]", in this case, "philosophy of history". It's from his work, An Interpretation of Universal History, a devastating critique of Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History. Originally given as a series of lectures at the Institute of Humanities in Madrid in 1948-49, it appeared in book form in Spanish in 1960, and in English translation in 1973. This passage appears in the first chapter, just when he is beginning to critique the book.

We will now ask ourselves, What is the content of Mr. Toynbee's book; what is it all about? The title, A Study of History, seems a bit equivocal. Does this mean that Toynbee proposes to write history in a different form from the one it has taken up to now? To some extent, for what he does is to start from the history books, from the science of history as such, and as it has been understood, in order to produce other effects and elaborations. What he does, then, is to take for granted historic science in its present form, and subject it to a secondary treatment in order to see to whether, in that enormous chaos which is a historic happening, one cannot glimpse rhythms, structures, laws, regularities which allow one to arrive at a clear picture of the shapes and features of the historic process. Therefore, it [the book] treats of what, thirty years ago [1918], was called the "philosophy of history."

Now to call something the "philosophy of history" is to use a misnomer, which started from the fact that people held the most confused notion of what philosophy is and thought that a philosophy could be made out of everything; that, as the man in the street, the good bourgeois, used to say, putting on a painfully intelligent expression, "everything has its philosophy," as if philosophy were like sugar, something to eat with other things; this led him to say that one must "take life with philosophy," as coffee is taken with a lump or two. The great historian Dilthey used to say that philosophy of history is a monster, half philosopher and half historian. In fact, there is no such thing as a philosophy of history. Philosophy is a science as special as any other, which has its completely specific themes and problems. One is not discussing that, but trying to see if, in the chaotic and confused series of historic events, one can descry lines, features, traits¾ in short, a physiognomy; there has not been a single period for which historic destiny has not presented something resembling a face, or a set of recognizable features.

One interesting thing you will notice is Ortega's use of the term "historic science" and his statement "Philosophy is a science as special as any other". The so called "European Philosophers" generally speaking are not averse to calling any discipline a "science", using the original meaning of the term in Latin, scientia, "knowledge", from scire, meaning "to know". Ortega sought to reform history by developing what he called "historic reason", a substitute for the "pure reason" practiced by the so called "Modern Philosophers" starting with Descartes, and adopted by the so called "pure sciences". In his view, "historic reason" was "a new way of thinking" that went "beyond philosophy". (On "historic reason" see his essay in English of 1935 titled "History as a System", included in a book of the same title, and also his lectures of 1940 and 1944, both with the title "Historic Reason", again gathered in a book with the same title.)

In his 1935 essay, "History as a System", Ortega first states that "Man, in a word, has no nature; what he has is . . . a history." "Nature" here means an unchanging "being", which had been the focus of philosophy from Parmenides to Heidegger. and was adopted by the physical sciences. According to Ortega, "Science [i.e., physical science] is an attempt to tell a story that's true every time it's told." We know now, more than Ortega knew then, that everything in the universe has a history, starting with the "Big Bang". By using "historic reason", we can focus on "becoming", which hearkens back to Heraclitus's "Everything is flux".

As I see it, it's time to revive what used to be the name of the sciences in the early 19th century, "natural history". "Natural History" should now be centered on the phenomenon of "sustainability": how things become, why they last, and how they cease to exist, especially since the "sustainability" of mankind is currently at stake. My current project is to link Ortega's thought to that currently fashionable term, but to do it in a more radical way than that of the physical sciences by using the methods of "historical reason". How many people think of the sun as a solid object that happens to radiate light, instead of what it (currently) is, a sustained nuclear reaction?

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by longknowledge

. How many people think of the sun as a solid object that happens to radiate light, instead of what it (currently) is, a sustained nuclear reaction?

I find what you say here curious. What do you mean, "what [the Sun] currently is". Do you think there has been some astronomical change (or will be a change) in what the Sun is?

[longknowledge]

Originally Posted by kennethamy

I find what you say here curious. What do you mean, "what [the Sun] currently is". Do you think there has been some astronomical change (or will be a change) in what the Sun is?

Haven't you heard tje latest?

The Sun was formed about 4.57 billion years ago when a hydrogen molecular cloud collapsed. Solar formation is dated in two ways: the Sun's current main sequence age, determined using computer models of stellar evolution and nucleocosmochronology, is thought to be about 4.57 billion years. This is in close accord with the radiometric date of the oldest Solar System material, at 4.567 billion years ago.
The Sun is about halfway through its main-sequence evolution, during which nuclear fusion reactions in its core fuse hydrogen into helium. Each second, more than 4 million tonnes of matter are converted into energy within the Sun's core, producing neutrinos and solar radiation; at this rate, the Sun will have so far converted around 100 Earth-masses of matter into energy. The Sun will spend a total of approximately 10 billion years as a main sequence star.
The Sun does not have enough mass to explode as a supernova. Instead, in about 5 billion years, it will enter a red giant phase, its outer layers expanding as the hydrogen fuel in the core is consumed and the core contracts and heats up. Helium fusion will begin when the core temperature reaches around 100 million kelvins and will produce carbon, entering the asymptotic giant branch phase.
Earth's fate is precarious. As a red giant, the Sun will have a maximum radius beyond the Earth's current orbit, 1 AU (1.5×1011 m), 250 times the present radius of the Sun. However, by the time it is an asymptotic giant branch star, the Sun will have lost roughly 30% of its present mass due to a stellar wind, so the orbits of the planets will move outward. If it were only for this, Earth would probably be spared, but new research suggests that Earth will be swallowed by the Sun owing to tidal interactions. Even if Earth would escape incineration in the Sun, still all its water will be boiled away and most of its atmosphere would escape into space. In fact, even during its current life in the main sequence, the Sun is gradually becoming more luminous (about 10% every 1 billion years), and its surface temperature is slowly rising. The Sun used to be fainter in the past, which is possibly the reason why life on Earth has only existed for about 1 billion years on land. The increase in solar temperatures is such that already in about a billion years, the surface of the Earth will become too hot for liquid water to exist, ending all terrestrial life.
Following the red giant phase, intense thermal pulsations will cause the Sun to throw off its outer layers, forming a planetary nebula. The only object that will remain after the outer layers are ejected is the extremely hot stellar core, which will slowly cool and fade as a white dwarf over many billions of years. This stellar evolution scenario is typical of low- to medium-mass stars.

Sourcr: Wikipedia

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by longknowledge

Haven't you heard tje latest?



Sourcr: Wikipedia

But you were talking about what people believe the Sun is as contrasted with what it actually is. I agree (of course) that the Sun has changed.

[jeeprs]

Originally Posted by kennethamy

But Socrates is very well represented by the analytic tradition. His method of philosophizing was philosophical analysis.

Indeed it was - but it was analysis in the first person. He was after all acclaimed as the 'wisest man in all of Greece' afer confessed to 'knowing nothing'. The Oracle of Delphi, by which this honour was bestowed, was inscribed with the motto: 'Man, know thyself'. This is not a matter of 'objective analysis'. It requires something much more intimate and immediate, and something which by and large the scientific and empirical thinkers are always at pains to deny by instead directing all the attention to external data, verifiable facts about measurable phenomena, and denying the centrality of the human person to whom all of this occurs.

'Scientific truth', writes Ortega, 'is characterised by is exactness and the certainty of its predictions. But these admirable qualities are contrived by science at the cost of the remaining on the plane of secondary problems, leaving intact the ultimate and decisive questions. Of this renunciation it makes its essential virtue, and for it, if for nought else, it deserves praise. Yet science is but a small part of the human mind and organism. Where it stops, man does not stop'. Jose Ortega a Gasset, History as a System, page 1

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by jeeprs

Indeed it was - but it was analysis in the first person. He was after all acclaimed as the 'wisest man in all of Greece' afer confessed to 'knowing nothing'. The Oracle of Delphi, by which this honour was bestowed, was inscribed with the motto: 'Man, know thyself'. This is not a matter of 'objective analysis'. It requires something much more intimate and immediate, and something which by and large the scientific and empirical thinkers are always at pains to deny by instead directing all the attention to external data, verifiable facts about measurable phenomena, and denying the centrality of the human person to whom all of this occurs.

I don't see the connection between what you have just written, and what we are discussing. Let's review the bidding. You claimed that recent (modern?) Western philosophy as rejected its tradition. I pointed out that much of recent philosophy in the West is philosophical analysis, and that Socrates did philosophical analysis.And that Socrates was certainly part of the Western tradition. My unstated conclusion was that (therefore) Western philosophy has not rejected the tradition of philosophical analysis begun and carried on by Socrates.

Your turn.

[jeeprs]

The initial passage from Ortega was a defence of the importance of the metaphysical and also a recognition of the metaphysical in the construction of knowledge.

I agree that analysis is an important part of philosophy, but it is only part of the tradition. Analysis can be forensic analysis or objective analysis or some other kind of analysis. Analytical philosphers of the Anglo-US schools tend to regard all philosophy as the analysis of propositions. Socrates was analytical but his significance in the tradition is more than his ability to analyse propositions. He is mainly remembered for being able to prompt his interrogators to ask deep questions about their own attitudes and beliefs. It is true that he did not advance a systematic metaphysic but nevertheless his dialogs were suggestive of many metaphysical concerns.

I believe that by the rejection of the metaphysical, which the analytical tradition has explicity done (see the quote above from Bertrand Russell), that Western philosophy has indeed 'abandoned its mission' which is to require the asking of very deep questions about one's own identity, the nature of knowledge, and these sorts of questions, which are necessarily first-person, rather than 'objective'.