Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tr352 2077 days ago
> It turns out you can't formalize anything that doesn't have proofs -- in other words, it basically only works for what we'd call "mathematics" or "pure logic". You can't formalize literally anything else in philosophy, at all.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. There is a wealth of logics that have been developed and studied within philosophy, that aim to formalize various philosophical concepts. See modal logics, deontic logics, logics about knowledge and belief, and so on.
1 comments
ukj 2077 days ago
The notion of a "proof" is only meaningful in a formal context.

Logic, mathematics, computer science, proof theory... same thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_theory

We are eternally stuck interpreting all of our theories in the context of their meta-theoretic assumptions.

link
tr352 2077 days ago
Not sure we’re talking about the same thing here. I was replying to your claim that nothing in philosophy (apart from mathematics) can be formalized. The role of logic is not to solve the metaphysical problem of infinite regress.
link
ukj 2077 days ago
Logic itself is a formalism.

Subject to all the constraints of formal language theory/linguistics.

It fails to address the symbol-grounding problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_grounding_problem

link