Unsolved Phillosophical Questions, Take One!

[Seil]

Okay. I need a clacker, a... whatchyamacallit. A *looksitup* marker. You guys get on that.

ANYWAY!

I like this TV show called The Big Bang Theory. Perhaps you've heard of it, it's pretty popular. My older brother says he thinks that it's written by the same people who beat up nerds in high school, but I think differently. That's a topic for another thread. What it has done is gotten me looking into all sorts of scientific theories and laws.

I got really interested in the philosophical problems, 'cause I feel way too dumb to involve myself in the unsolved physics problems. I looked it up, and there's this handy list!

List.

There's a few that I'm particularly interested in, like the Molyneaux one, the problem of induction, and the idea of moral luck. So for now, let's tackle those, because my thread, my favorite unsolved philosophical problems. What is intelligence?

Originally Posted by That article there that I linked above

Intuitively, it seems to be the case that we know certain things with absolute, complete, utter, unshakable certainty. For example, if you travel to the Arctic and touch an iceberg, you know that it would feel cold. These things that we know from experience are known through induction. The problem of induction in short; (1) any inductive statement (like the sun will rise tomorrow) can only be deductively shown if one assumes that nature is uniform. (2) the only way to show that nature is uniform is by using induction. Thus induction cannot be justified deductively.

I like this, because it ties in with our 'Aliens' thread. How can we intuitively know something?

[Aerozord]

All information is assumed because at some point you must assume your own observations and memories are accurate. Its why I have a saying, always possible I am right, and always possible I am wrong.

That being said you can certainly deduce things. using that sun example. We can observe the Earth rotating and are given no reason to believe this will stop thus it is logical to conclude the sun shall rise. While initially alot of science was inductive reasoning we eventually reached the causes of these phenomenon and could safely deduce consequences.

[Seil]

But then again, there's a distinction atwixt learned knowledged and experienced knowledge. We know that the Earth revolves around the Sun. But people didn't know that, say, a thousand years ago. It was just the sun rising. People in "ye oldene dayse"... well, they could probably deduce without really calling it deduction, but, they were aware of the same thing - cold is cold because it is cold. They could determine that if a ship sailed about and hit, say, Greenland, that is was cold.

They didn't go there, they didn't hang around, but they know it's cold without ever being there. The knowledge that snow and ice is cold gives experiential learning an edge, but then again, deductive reasoning.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

These aren't unsolved philsopohical questions- there are immense traditions behind them.
Basically with intelligence you have the Kantian tradition of reified knowledge with the sublimed action, the Hegelian tradition of procedure being at the centre (with action as either a neutral or positive factor) and then you have the post-modern approach which stresses the ideal of language with knowing tied in tidy conceptual loops of language stressing.
This shit has been argued over pretty extensively for the last 200 years.

[synkr0nized]

Originally Posted by Seil

My older brother says he thinks that it's written by the same people who beat up nerds in high school [...]

Ha, I think your brother and I might get along.

[Sithdarth]

(2) the only way to show that nature is uniform is by using induction.

Look up Noether's Theorem. Conservation laws imply uniformity. Because we can do the same experiment at different times and get the same result we know energy is conserved and the sun will not disappear. Similar things can be said for the Earth continuing to rotate and orbit the Sun. Same thing applies to that iceberg. We know water ice under ambient atmospheric conditions is cold and we know the inherent symmetries of the Universe we know it will be cold in the Arctic.

The problem with philosophers is they generally discuss things as if physics never advanced beyond the late dark ages.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by synkr0nized

Ha, I think your brother and I might get along.

Seil's brother does sound like he has opinions I'd agree with.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Originally Posted by Sithdarth

Look up Noether's Theorem. Conservation laws imply uniformity. Because we can do the same experiment at different times and get the same result we know energy is conserved and the sun will not disappear. Similar things can be said for the Earth continuing to rotate and orbit the Sun. Same thing applies to that iceberg. We know water ice under ambient atmospheric conditions is cold and we know the inherent symmetries of the Universe we know it will be cold in the Arctic.

The problem with philosophers is they generally discuss things as if physics never advanced beyond the late dark ages.

And the problem with physicists is that they think philosophy stopped at Descartes.
Its always hilarious when people like Hawking try to claim philosophy is dead. Hawking would fail Phil 101: Introduction to Idealism.
Noether's theorum takes down Idealism as well as Rutherford's gold foil experiments take down an atomistic view of matter.

[Magus]

Originally Posted by Professor Smarmiarty

And the problem with physicists is that they think philosophy stopped at Descartes.

You have to admit that that if God controlled your physical body for you based on what you thought about doing with your mind/soul, you could get away with a lot more stuff. "Listen, I simply wanted my arm to move--God did the actual moving. God buried that knife in my wife's back and God buried her body in the rose garden. God coulda stopped that whole thing at any point along the way, all right?"

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Ah but using the Zizekian analysis of God's existence in the negative parallex of non-syncretic points outside of the real and imaginary orders post the Incarnation he is yoked to our own freedom rather than the other way around and thus in theory he can do us in for genocide when the rapture comes.