Philosophy
From crispyneurons
"Be not afraid of the universe."
- Najagneq
The intellectual pursuit of philosophy is particularly important to me. I am currently working towards a philosophy degree from UCSD, which I hope will be a decent intellectual foundation for my future graduate-level pursuits in what I call natural epistemology, which makes knowledge engineering a kind of applied epistemology.
[edit] Tidbits
- A short list of Philosophic Claims That Ring True.
- The Symphony Playing Itself, A monograph on the meaning of change and pattern in our foundationless cosmos.
[edit] Natural Philosophy
Today, philosophy is considered an ivory-tower pursuit having little or no relevance to everyday life. But this wasn't always so. Before the schism of philosophy and science began in the 1600s, the two endeavors were one. Isaac Newton is considered a mathematician today but considered himself a natural philosopher.
The concerns of philosophy are of critical relevance for any person, for any reasoning being. It is the root of critical thinking and of logic. All modern scientific disciplines are rooted in what was once called natural philosophy. (Don't believe me? Check out Aristotle's works here and here: he explores cosmology, meteorology, logic, systems of category, cognitive science, geronotology... even biological systematics).
Thousands of years ago, rational inquiry, logic and scientific reasoning dawned, and when it did, its practitioners made no distinction between what we now call the scientific and philosophic inquiry. I adhere to this ancient tradition of natural philosophy, not to the modern conception of philosophy.
My primary philosophic interests lie the broad realms of pragmatism, semiotics and zen.
Because of my lifelong exposure to software, I often approach these ideas from a computational perspective. I suspect that software is a much more profound force operating on humanity than is generally believed.
[edit] Semiotics and Pragmatism
Pragmatism and semiotics were both pioneered by Charles S. Peirce, an extraordinarily original yet cryptic American philosopher of the 19th century. Pragmatism holds that both the meaning and truth of any idea is a function of its practical outcome. As self-evident as this notion may seem, it is actually quite controversial in academic circles. As far as I can tell, there is no other technique for determining the validity of the axioms that form the basis of a logical system. Pragmatism is coupled with semiotics -- semiotics articlates a metaphysical claim, and pragmatism tests its validity.
Semiotics is commonly known as 'the study of signs,' but I prefer to think of it more casually as the science of symbols. Symbols are thoughts, the currency of mental processes, and the building blocks of knowledge. As Umberto Eco says, "a sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie." Semiotics is basically a toolset for identifying formal patterns that serve to establish meaning. There are deep connections here to to mythology, linguistics, and software (especially in the artificial intelligence arena). While Saussure and Eco contemplate a dyadic model of semiotics, comprising an object and the sign that represents it, Peirce goes further to define the role of the interpretant in the process of semiosis. This results in a triadic model, leading to the ontological categories of firstness, secondness and thirdness. At first blush, semiotics speaks only to symbols, but Peirce extends it to the realm of phenomenology, even going as far as describing an evolutionary cosmology based on the universe operating as its own intepretant. His description is full of jargon; this dictionary tries to make it more comprehensible.
[edit] Existential Atheism
"Be worthy of your adversaries."
- Nietzsche
[edit] Existentialism
(TBD)
