{"id":8752,"date":"2013-05-27T14:10:07","date_gmt":"2013-05-27T14:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/05\/27\/philosophy-always-buries-its-undertakers\/"},"modified":"2013-05-27T14:10:07","modified_gmt":"2013-05-27T14:10:07","slug":"philosophy-always-buries-its-undertakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/05\/27\/philosophy-always-buries-its-undertakers\/","title":{"rendered":"Philosophy Always Buries Its Undertakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philosophy always buries its undertakers (Etienne Gilson) and resurrects its dead<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a semi-competent article in The Guardian<\/em> entitled Philosophy Isn't Dead Yet<\/a> that is worth a look.  Why 'semi-competent'?<\/span><\/p>\n

The author characterizes metaphysics as ". . . the branch of philosophy that aspires to the most general understanding of nature \u2013 of space and time, the fundamental stuff of the world."  That is just wrong. If I were in a snarky mood I would say it is hilariously<\/em> wrong.  For it forecloses on the possibility that there is more to reality than nature, the realm of space-time-matter.  You can't define out of existence, or out of the province of metaphysics,  God, the soul, unexemplified universals and the rest of the Platonic menagerie.  If they aren't metaphysical topics, nothing is.  <\/span><\/p>\n

The author would have done much better had he defined metaphysics as the branch of philosophy that aspires to an understanding of reality.  A central question in philosophy is precisely whether reality is exhausted by nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Beyond these domestic problems there is the failure of physics to accommodate conscious beings. The attempt to fit consciousness into the material world, usually by identifying it with activity in the brain, has failed dismally, if only because there is no way of accounting for the fact that certain nerve impulses are supposed to be conscious (of themselves or of the world) while the overwhelming majority (physically essentially the same) are not. In short, physics does not allow for the strange fact that matter reveals itself to material objects (such as physicists).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The middle sentence in this paragraph is exactly right.  But it is sandwiched between two very dubious sentences.  First of all, why is it a failure of physics<\/em> to accommodate conscious beings?  It is undoubtedly a failure of naturalistic metaphysics, but the latter is not physics.  Don't confuse physics with a scientistic metaphysics based on physics.  Physics cannot be said to fail to accommodate consciousness for the simple reason that that is not the job of physics to do any such thing..  Physics abstracts from consciousness.  Conscious beintgs such as me and my cats  can be studied from the point of view of physics since we are physical objects, though not just  physical objects.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Suppose you throw a rock, a cactus, a coyote, and me off a cliff at the same time.  Rock, cactus, coyote and man will fall at the same rate: 32 ft per sec per sec.  (Ignore my arm-flailing and the resultant wind resistance.) The foursome is subject to the same physical laws, the same physical constants, the same idealizations (center of mass, center of gravity, etc).  Physics abstracts from reason, self-consciousness, intentionality, qualia, animal life, vegetative life.  To expect physics to "accommodate" life, consciousneness, self-consciousness, agency, intentionality and all the rest is to tax it beyond its powers.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his third sentence, the author tells us that ". . . physics does not allow for the strange fact that matter reveals itself to material objects (such as physicists)."  This is an inept and confused way of making an important point.  The important point is that matter is known<\/em>:  Our physics gives us knowledge<\/em> of the physical universe.  It is indeed a strange and wonderful fact that matter reveals itself to us, that it possesses an inherent intelligibility that we are in some measure able to discern.  The author spoils things, however, by adding that matter reveals itself to material objects.  Of course, physicists are material beings; but it is to the minds<\/em> of these material beings that matter reveals itself.  <\/span><\/p>\n

The author is making an absurd demand: he is demanding that physics explain how knowledge is possible.  But it is actually worse than that: he is demanding that physics explain how knoweldge of the material world is possible by wholly material beings.  Good luck with that.<\/span><\/p>\n

We are also told that current physics "mishandles time."  Smolin is mentioned.  Really?  Why demand that physics accommodate the full reality of time?  Physics, I would argue, does well, for its limited purposes, to abstract from the A-series.  The B-series is all it needs.  (See "Why Do We Need Philosophy?" below for an explanation of the distinction.) Physics can't account for temporal becoming?  Why should it?  One possibility is that temporal becoming is mind-dependent and not part of reality as she is in herself.  Another possibility is that physics simply abstracts from temporal becoming in the way it abstracts from life, consciousness, self-consciousness, intentionality, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

The author is right, however, to smell "conceptual confusion beneath mathematical sophistication" when it comes to attempts by Lawrence Krauss and others to explain how the universe arose ex nihilo<\/em> from spontaneous fluctuations in a quantum vacuum, as if theose fluctuations and that vacuum were not precisely something<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

If all's well that ends well, the author ends well with a paragraph that earns the coveted MavPhil<\/em> stamp of approval and nihil obstat<\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Perhaps even more important, we should reflect on how a scientific image of the world that relies on up to 10 dimensions of space and rests on ideas, such as fundamental particles, that have neither identity nor location, connects with our everyday experience. This should open up larger questions, such as the extent to which mathematical portraits capture the reality of our world \u2013 and what we mean by "reality". The dismissive "Just shut up and calculate!" to those who are dissatisfied with the incomprehensibility of the physicists' picture of the universe is simply inadequate. [. . .]This sounds like a job for a philosophy not yet dead<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nRelated articles<\/span><\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Another Example of Awful Science Journalism<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>What is Left for Philosophy to Do?<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Why Do We Need Philosophy?<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Am I a Body or Do I Have a Body?<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Galen Strawson versus Nicholas Humphrey on Consciousness<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Religion Always Buries its Undertakers<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Philosophy of the gaps?<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philosophy always buries its undertakers (Etienne Gilson) and resurrects its dead. There is a semi-competent article in The Guardian entitled Philosophy Isn't Dead Yet that is worth a look.  Why 'semi-competent'? The author characterizes metaphysics as ". . . the branch of philosophy that aspires to the most general understanding of nature \u2013 of space … Continue reading “Philosophy Always Buries Its Undertakers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metaphilosophy","category-scientism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}