h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't envy those of your contemporaries who have to argue against you even now, Emmi!

Another suggestion I have is that you don't look at ethics too soon. You might find a summary, maybe the last chapter, of 'A Theory of Justice' by John Rawls interesting. I agree with practically all of it, but it far too hefty a book, and mentions too much other stuff, for you to take on in full right now!

I have to confess to being a philosophy graduate myself; but by specialisation, I have a PhD in the psychology of reasoning. You already have so many advantages that the most important one, luck (if there is such a thing) seems a bit excessive.


Hey, I just heard this on the radio:

"Bush: A poisonous family of shrubs, now extinct."

toxx

EM -- >"Socrates didn't have anything to do with the Sophists; the actual philosophical school evolved after his death, I believe."

The sophists were lawyers and teachers, and certainly were active in Socrates' time (Protagoras, called the first Sophist, is dated to around 445BCE, over 50 years before Socrates died); I never heard that they formed anything like a "school" of philosophy (see http://www.happinessonline.org/MoralCode/LiveWithTruth/p17.htm ).

>"Socrates was executed allegedly because he was corrupting the young people of Athens."<

We are not in disagreement here. From Russell's History of Western Philosophy": [Socrates] . . . taught philosophy to the young, but not for money, like the Sophists" . . . "The main facts of the trial of Socrates are not open to doubt. The prosecution was based upon the charge that "Socrates is an evil-doer and a curious person, searching into things under the earth and above the heaven; and making the worse appear the better cause, and teaching all this to others".

His case is eternally relevant. A loose law such as "the guilt of being a bad infulence" can always be used against an awkwardly truthful person by a political party whose power he threatens. The similarity with the trial of Jesus is striking; and the posthumous influence of "innocent victims" of a corrupt legislation can be enormous. As the Irish rebel Pearse said of the English, only a hundred or so years ago, "The fools -- they have left us our Fenian dead!" -- and that influence is still strenuously active in the IRA. You can think of many other such cases.

For clarity: my quote from Russell above ends with "teaching all this to others". The last pararaph is my own.

I used < quote > and < /quote > but they got parsed into inverted commas -- you need to hide them with internal spaces.

Nor is the comment supposed to be an apology for the IRA. Many, probably most, followers of virtuous teachers either ditch, lose, or subvert their ideals in no time flat. St Francis might be the best example of this.

Are you saying St Francis was the teacher or the follower?

St Francis was truly saintly; his followers became major Inquisitors.

Emmy. I wonder if you might have been named after Emmy Noether. Her ideas have influenced me via Noggin who contributes to this forum. She isn't, perhaps, as well-known as she ought to be.

toxx

Recumbentman, I'll take your word for it on Socrates. My actual knowledge of the *history* of ancient Athenian philosophy comes primarily from what we've just been learning in my history class. When people start quoting from things on topics I know very little about, I tend to bow in submission.

I was named after the main character in the book 'Emily of New Moon' by LM Montgomery (same person who wrote 'Anne of Green Gables'). My mother read the book when she was about nine or ten and decided that she would have a daughter named Emily when she grew up. Surprisingly, she did. My h2g2 nickname (echomikeromeo) comes from the international radio code (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie...) for my initials. I won't reveal my other names lest you be stalkers who are coming to San Diego to track me down and kidnap me...you can never be too cautious.

EMR

toxx, what were Emmy Noether's ideas? I only know of her as a mathematician.

I was referring to her mathematical ideas, Dogster. They have a lot of implications for philosophy too. Noggin would have you believe that they have a bearing on whether body and mind can be separate or have to be essentially the same. I'm not saying that he's wrong or right about this.

toxx

Hey Emily. You've just about given it all away now. How many professors of philosophy are there at UCSD with the initial 'R'? But who's gonna kidnap you? I don't see that there are any more potential rewards there than just going for a random kid in Hollywood, for example.

In fact, my PhD supervisor was there on sabbatical for about a term. I think he did more windsurfing than academic stuff - but hey, why not? It would have been before your time, so it's no use asking whether he met baby Emmy.

toxx

Strange, I'll have to find out more about that sometime. I'm pretty sure her results in algebra and algebraic geometry don't have any relation to the mind body problem, so I guess she must have done some stuff I didn't know about.

Noggin, if you're reading this, explain yourself...

Hi Dogster

Emmy Noether's most significant result, known as Noether's Theorem, is a mathemtical proof that "If the laws of nature are invariant through rotation (ie are the same for all observers) then the existence of the universe must be underpinned by a conserved quantity". It's one of my favourites because I arrived at the same conclusion without being able to provide a formal proof.

Its relevance to the mind body problem is indirect, but basically revolves around the notion that if the mind and body interact coherently (which would seem to be necessary), then the mind is part of the same conserved quantity as the material universe.

Noggin

Elegant. It would seem to support what you want to believe in. Materialists will say it supports matter; theists will say it supports the deity. Does it say more than "something reliable exists"? Which is not saying much (if anything). However let me not attempt to mock it. It may prove significant.

Noggin, right I didn't know about that just about the algebra stuff. The philosophical conclusion you draw is dubious in my mind though. For a start, Noether's theorem (which I just looked up) only applies to a class of possible physical theories (admittedly, one which most physical theories currently known about fall into), leaving open the possibility that there will be, in the future, a physical theory to which her theorem doesn't apply. Secondly, your conclusion only follows if the universe is exactly reflected by the mathematical model, any small deviations in the correspondence between the real world and the mathematical model undermine this conclusion.

... which is not to say I disagree with the conclusion, I just don't think Noether's theorem is relevant.

Hi, Noggin. I guess the time has come for you to state (restate?) your thinking that led you to a conclusion similar to Noether's Theorem. I am still at a loss to understand how quantities are important. It seems to my simple mind that quantities have to be quantities of something. I would like to know how the quantity can be conserved separately from the 'something'. If there is, in fact, a 'something', I would like to know what it is.

toxx

Okay, I know, I could have been a little smarter about giving away all that information. Silly me...I never was one for thinking ahead. (But I don't believe you actually went and *checked* the UCSD page!)

If anyone's interested in fiction with a strong emphasis on philosophy, you should try The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. It's a trilogy of 3 very long books, and I'm almost done with the third one right now. The series takes place in the 17th and 18th centuries, and a large part of it (especially the bit I'm reading right now) focuses on the calculus dispute between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. The author contrives a circumstance in which the two meet up, and they have a huge 'philosophical showdown' in which they basically end up insulting each other. Other 'important' people in the book include the English types like Hooke, Locke, Boyle, Wren and Wilkins. Other than being extremely long the books are really terrific and I *highly* recommend them.

I'm racking my brains for some lovely sort of discussion topic but can't think of any right now. I will certainly let the world know when one occurs to me.

EMR

Do people believe in redemption? Are we likely to get a change after a vote for no change. I've got a sneaky suspicion we may get some. Is there any philosophical mileage in this?

You're right, Emmi. I didn't go looking for the UCSD site. But now you mention it, I wonder whether there is more than one 'Romeo' on the list.

The trilogy sounds interesting. I believe that Newton was an extremely unpleasant person in reality.

Cheers, toxx.

From what I've heard he sounds to have been on the Autistic spectrum - maybe with Asperges Syndrome. The experiments he did on his own eyes with pointy sticks left me squirming!

Some scientists and philosophers reach heights of detachment and stoicism. When Wittgenstein had to have an operation he insisted on having mirrors set up so he could watch.