berbBeyond Logical Positivism

Beyond Logical Positivism

JUDGMENT DAY

A quick post: I agree that game theory and LP are simply tools.
But game theory is more than poetry once certain preconditions
have been met. But the question of what is or is not poetry
is not the crucial issue here. What are preconditions? I think preconditions involve axios (value/worth), archon (first principles)
or arche (first principle), and syllogismos (Syllogismology/judgment).
What really is the basic point that all the philosophers have
been talking about: More time, immortality, eternity. Unamuno,
Nietzsche, Plato, Christianity (C.S. Lewis). Bertrand Russell
says that Carnap/LP tells us that philosophy is a matter of syntax
but that doesn't quite provide what we need. Nicholas mentions
F. H. Bradley, A. N. Whitehead, and F. Tipler. I have several books by these folks including Teilhard de Chardin. The Claremont School of Theology very near Pomona College where I got my undergraduate
degree now has a Center for Process Theology based on Whitehead
and Hartshorne. A scientific argument for what humanity would like to believe is well-covered in F. Tipler's THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY. He also quotes one of the best representatives of the oppposing
view, Steven Weinberg: ". . . I do not for a minute think that
science will ever provide the consolations that have been offered
by religion in facing death." Of course Weinberg rejects those
consolations from whatever source. F. Tipler concludes: "I dis-
agree. Science can now offer precisely the consolations in facing
death that religion once offered. Religion is now part of science."
Weinberg elsewhere implies that some of his colleagues have
"sold their souls" (a little humor here) to compete for the Templeton
Prize for Progress in Religion.

Kafka once said, "The meaning of life is that it stops."
I think we're all in the land of conjecture here.

Let me conclude this post with a quote from Einstein: "Man seeks to
form for himself, in whatever manner is suitable for him, a simplified
and lucid image of our world, and so to overcome the world of
experience by striving to replace it to some extent by this image.
This is what the painter does, and the poet, the speculative
philosopher, the natural scientists, each in his own way. Into this
image and its formation he places the center of gravity of his
emotional life, in order to attain the peace and serenity that he
cannot find within the narrow confines of swirling personal
experience."

Taking off from Condorcet, H.H. Gossen and others, Axiologist
attempted to present a model ("The Conscious Clock") toward
which we should try to move the world of personal experience.