[MD] Philosophy is dead

[Ian]

Hi Steve, not sure about the Plato / appearances bit, but from "I  
suspect that he thinks that ..." onwards I totally agree.
Ian


Sent from my iPhone

On 15 Sep 2010, at 19:51, Steven Peterson <peterson.steve at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Hi John, Horse, Marsha,
>
> I hesitate to conclude that Hawking is a moron since there is so much
> evidence to the contrary.
>
> What I hope he means by "philosophy is dead" is that philosophy as
> Plato's project of getting beyond appearances to get us in touch with
> reality as it really is has run its course and outlived its
> usefulness. If so, I think Pirsig and any pragmatist would agree. On
> the other hand, what I suspect he does mean is that science has proven
> itself to be the one true way of getting us in touch with reality as
> it really is. I suspect that he thinks scientific descriptions have
> some privileged status over other sorts of descriptions. The sentence
> "water is composed of one part oxygen to two parts hydrogen" is
> thought to get us closer to the essence of what water really is than
> the sentences "water is healthy" or "water is wet" or "water is life."
> Someone who spends all his time thinking about theoretical physics may
> start to think that a grand unifying theory in physics will be a
> theory of everything. The fact that everything perhaps _can_ be given
> a physical description will never mean that everything only ever
> _should_ be thought of in physical terms.
>
> Best,
> Steve
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