Good stuff. I agree with his take on the Sophists v Plato and Wittgenstein's overratedness. His answer to 7 seems odd, though: On the one hand he speaks approvingly of "genuine philosophy" but on the other denies the existence of real philosophical problems (a Wittgensteinian position, ironically). But what good is philosophy if it isn't helping solve real problems? I think what he means to say is that "philosophy" as it's commonly practiced isn't very good at solving (genuine) philosophical problems.

a Wittgensteinian position, ironically

i noticed that too....

As aesthetics becomes more informed by biology & neuroscience, the Sophists are increasingly winning against the Platonists in this area as well.

I'm curious why he thinks it's too late to become a scientist. It's not like there's an evolutionary biology or chemistry or whatever module of your brain that must be exposed to evolution at the right time or it atrophies.

Of course sophists were also described as teachers of the art of making the worse seem like the better. Granted, all sides in a typical Socratic dialogue seem pretty idiotic by today's standards ("so, then, dear so-and-so, you would accept it as obvious that proposition x is true," proposition x being an absurdity) still the phenomenon of sophism is very much with us, especially in the public realm of discussion touching on controversial issues of social policy: immigration, affirmative action, taxation, income distribution, market efficiency, free trade, the list is endless. Sophistry reigns, and it is too bad we don't have more real "lovers of truth" to cut through the bullshit, guys like Steve Sailer for example. Or in a much more modest capacity, Dean Baker.

As for Wittgenstein, he was a guy who thought he was a genius but then woke up one morning to discover that in fact he was perfectly ordinary. Will soon be forgotten.

Still I'm getting a copy of Stewart's book on Leibnitz and Spinoza; sounds like interesting stuff.

Amazon doesn't have a review up of the Courtier book -- make up a pseudonym and do the guy a favor.

On the "Theory of Everything" question: there are lot of reasons why that's impossible, among them the fact that reality changes while you're describing it (and even because you've described it).

On the other hand, we all go through life with a general overall view of things, and some are better than others. (Even though we can't be sure what the best general view is, a lot are obviously harmful, for example, "Things just happen, and we really have no control of them".) And from time to time we can see that one general overall view has a real superiority over another one even though the latter isn't really all that bad.

For example, I've been promoting the idea that reality is historical and always developing. A simple idea, but a lot of social science and other thought assumes conservativism and only apparent change.

Anyway, for me philosophy is the development of a general overall view, and it has to be done in knowledge of the impossibility of closure and certainty. All general overall views have flaws, but some are better than others and the way to deal with the flaws is to see how to correct them, whether with kludges or with complete redesign.

When philosophy redefined itself as a quasi-scientific stufy around 1950, it renounced the "general overall view" function in favor of specialized expert tasks. But really, almost everything expert belongs to a specific science or technology -- that's what expertise is all about. So basically, philosophy defined itself out of existence.

The best philosophy I read is by non-philosophers, often scientists.

Please, someone tell me I'm not the only one who read it as "10 Questions for Martha Stewart)

LOL.

Please, someone tell me I'm not the only one who read it as "10 Questions for Martha Stewart)

No, you're not.

The best philosophy I read is by non-philosophers, often scientists.

Indeed. Some of the most interesting philosophical stuff on reason and realism I found in Fashionable Nonsense, by Sokal and Bricmont (their polemic against postmodernism, which of course discusses the Sokal Hoax). Their discussion may be very basic to many here, but it was the first time I had been exposed to those concepts.

While not as perhaps dismissive of philosophy as many here (I actually made the effort to try and read Derrida in High school, being a pretentious git and all), I agree with many of the points people make here, especially the whole thing about the best philosophy not being done by philosophers (I tend to find mine in novels), and that most philosophy nowadays is almost a sort of linguistic and rhetorical occultism.

Thing is, what can be done to rescue philosophy from the "philosophers"?

Actually, I've been told that people in AI and machine-translation DO think that contemporary philosophy is valuable.

But this philosophy isn't useful to people not in AI or machine-translation. It's become a specialized aspect of something else, and doesn' fulfill the philosophical function.

Just got my copy of The Courtier and the Heretic. On page 19 I read, concerning the persecution of the conversos (Jews who converted or pretended to convert to Christianity) in Spain during the Inquisition: "...conversion did little to quench the fires of fanatical intolerance: tens of thousands were burned at the stake." I am neither Catholic nor an apologist for Catholicism, but even I know that this figure is not supported by the historical record. Looking the matter up in Wikipedia I notice that the latest scholarly consensus for total number of persons killed during the entire corse of the Inquisition in Spain is in the neighborhood of 5000, most of whom were not conversos.

So I have to wonder: how reliable is Matthew Stewart as an unbiased reporter of the historical record? Why is he repeating the anti-clerical propaganda of a bygone generation? I hope this is an isolated example.

: how reliable is Matthew Stewart as an unbiased reporter of the historical facts? Why is he repeating the anti-clerical propaganda of a bygone age?

he isn't unbiased. read the epilogue and you'll see he follows the consensus in some areas and not in others and admits this. he's wrong on this re: inquisition, but very few people who don't study this area know the facts. stewart can't be expected (IMO) to research all the details of every historical assertion he makes outside of the central thesis of the book, the key should be on the relationship between liebniz and spinoza. how do you evaluate this? well, you have to know something about the time, and reading the original works by both authors would help. in the end, take it all with a grain of salt and sift it through your own knowledgebase.

(p.s. i'm reading john derbyshire's unknown quantity and there are small errors [IMO] in some of his references to ancient history, but that is very tangential to the core of the work in relation to the history of mathematics, which i assume john knows with greater depth)

and for what it's worth, i don't buy stewart's central contention about the importance of the meeting between leibniz and spinoza. but the book was a good read anyhow.

Unknown quantity is a good book of its kind. His book on the Riemann hypothesis is a great one. Wait till you see his chapter on the ant and the zeta function.

I'm now more than half way through The Courtier. Verdict: highly sophomoric, though you do get a sense of the main ideas of the two philosophers -- in Spinoza's case, in all of its self-contradictory absurdity (assuming Miller's is an essentially accurate representation.)

As for Stewart himself, he comes off as s.o. who never got over his reading of Hesse's Steppenwolf or its other German equivalents. In other words a hero-worshipping narcicist with a superiority complex, who likes nothing better than to display his contempt for those lesser clods who are not priveleged to have been born into the aristocracy of the spirit.

Of course if he had talent and could write, that might be a pardonable foible. But since he has neither, he comes off as slightly ridiculous. In my eyes anyway.

I keep saying Miller when I mean Stewart. He should take some comfort in that as I am obviously far gone into senility.

most of the things Stewart Matthew says in his ten questions as well as in his books are much closer to the common sense and so to the truth than the ordinary traditional story about philosophy and what is best he is also often amusing, but I would dislike his version as well becaming one day a traditional story, which is in fact the problem about the truth.
He admits that despite naivite and a thirst for problems that are imaginary, philosophy and not science has been his main source of formation and criticism. More so, when he tell us that he has little to envy to a MBA for running a job in a consulting firm, and true enough I agree that one can learn still less than in a lecture about Plato and have nevertheless more pretensions than him.
That is why a pretension to have the truth about everything is not a peculiar feature of philosophers but widespread among human beings. Scientist to whom, he consider in general better informed about human sciences than the other way round are far more dangerous and tedious with their theories given its non assumed methaphysics and the mathematic mask with which it has hidden as well as for its natural disregard to the consequences of their quest. What is worst they have fewer Matthews to remember them that.
Personaly, I consider philosophy like he does a perfect waste of time once past to a mature age, but then I am far most afraid of scientist and bussiness men.

Pd, By the way, I would enjoy to have a drink and so congratulate you so warmly for your all what is fresh and good humored in your books.

RE philosophy

“Philosophy is the science which considers truth”
http://beepbeepitsme.blogspot.co...- considers.html

I agree Steweart's style has its drawbacks -- he needs to work with a ruthless editor who will get rid of the unnecessary verbal flourishes. But I enjoy the book immensely: perhaps I am not so much interested in philosophy as I am in philosophers -- as men with desires, worries, problems, inner conflicts, doubts -- and the way their work connects to -- and reveals -- their inner lives. (Perhaps not surprisingly, I am very fond of Ray Monk's work). I think this book sketches a believable picture of the two men and their encounter -- it is very successul as a novel, then, even if others may object to its philosophical merits (of which Stewart does not make any great claims).

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Well, Matthew, last Apr., when I rewondered, if there WAS any existent God up there, I just challenged Him to an innocent chess tournament match, where there was just a 5-party lack, black: of course myself, & then found out, that He couldn't live up to, whatever it meant to Him, between us all a big deception that's, however, meanwhile absolutely welcome to be taken seriously by any Morallist, so that I can more easily tell & help you concentrate on, what moral is all about, why?: Be- cause there are relatively many problems & humans, e.g. my Danish xxxxxx, I don't know, if I can 'just like that' see as MY responsibility.
Greetings, J.A.

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