Category: Philosophocastry

The Price of Shunning the Challenge of Postmodernism

“Some scientists and exponents of “scientism” will be tempted to turn their back on [the challenges posed by epistemological relativism: attacks on the objectivity of science]. They may well suppose that, if people who can’t or won’t do the hard work to understand science wish to pretend it isn’t the best approximation to the truth about the world we have, that is their problem. And if there are people whose wish that there be a reality – religious, spiritual, holistic, metaphysical – that transcends anything that science can know about, leads them to the thought that science is blinkered and partial in its account of the truth, well, who are we scientists to take them from their dogmatic slumbers? But the stakes for science and for civilization are too high simply to treat those who deny its objectivity in the way we would treat those who claim the Earth is flat.” – Alex Rosenberg (2005), ‘Philosophy of Science’, p. 191. (Emphasis mine)

On the Liberalist’s Tolerance

Žižek, S. (Autumn 2007), ‘Tolerance as an Ideological Category’:

The Culturalization of Politics
Why are today so many problems perceived as problems of intolerance, not as problems of inequality, exploitation, injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, not emancipation, political struggle, even armed struggle? Continue reading On the Liberalist’s Tolerance

Grice’s ‘Logic and Conversation’

Grice, H.P. (1975), ‘Logic and Conversation’

Formalists vs. Informalists:

  • Divergences in meaning exist between formal devices and natural languages.
  • Philosophers in the formalist camp view elements of meaning in natural languages as imperfections.
  • Informalists hold that the insistence on a perfect language is philosophically unjustified.

Zipf’s Law

“Zipf’s Law describes the power law patterning of the ordering of word frequencies. The frequency of a particular word in natural languages is found to be proportional with its rank: the most commonly used word is twice as frequent as the second most common word, three times as frequent as the third most common word, etc. Cancho and Solé were able to model the emergence of Zipf’s power law distribution in a network describing the effort required in mutual understanding between a hearer and a speaker. Language which relies upon maximum rigidity of word and meaning associations (such as computational machine language) requires too much work for the speaker, whereas language which allows maximum flexibility of associations (such as dream language) requires too much work for the hearer. Least effort is achieved at a point of creative ambiguity, a sudden transition point in which words are distributed in Zipf’s power law relation.”

– From a thesis on Hermeutic Gaia by Adam Croft

Hegel’s Quest

“Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.

Nürnberg, Sep. 30, 1809

Written to remember
Hegel, Prof. & Principal.”