Another philosophical statement that doesn't meet the standard:

• Philosophy is a mathematical capability of the language at hand.

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao — T Clark

This goes straight to Yanofsky's characterization of the truth, i.e. most truth is ineffable:

eternal(#S) => ineffable(#S)
or
¬ ineffable(#S) => ¬ eternal(#S)

It revolves around properties of sentences. So, I think that this example is actually captured by the definition.

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards - Emerson — T Clark

toManifest(_owner, _byWhom, _work)

∀ _work ( ¬ toManifest(God, cowards, _work) )

It is a 3-argument predicate while none of the arguments are sentences. This is a similar problem as JohnSaid(#S) or Said(John, #S).

This definition can definitely not handle persons involved, such as "by whom" or "for whom".

If it were not about God, but about an arbitrary person John, then it would be about a physical fact. For example, "John will not have his work made manifest by cowards". In my opinion, "by whom" and "for whom" tend to point to physical facts.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason - Kant — T Clark

Knowledge(#S) <-> ( Stage1Senses(#S) ∧Stage2Understanding(#S) ^ Stage3Reason(#S) )

S has property Knowledge if and only if S has senses in stage1 and ...

In my opinion, it seems to work.

Another philosophical statement that doesn't meet the standard:

Philosophy is a mathematical capability of the language at hand. — Lionino

hasGödelNumbering(#languageDefinition) => isPhilosophicalLanguage(#languageDefinition)

I think that it matches the definition.

Note: Even English has just standard UTF-8 as Gödel numbering. You can do arithmetic in English and express the UTF-8 algorithm in plain English. The problem will be the language definition of English. A rather poor definition from something like Google Translate could possibly be used.

I don't understand you responses to my statements. Seems like you're just stretching your definition to fit my examples.

I am interested in a computable predicate, i.e. a computer program or a function, that will be able to distinguish between statements that are philosophical and statements that are not. Therefore, the most important requirement is that it can be implemented as source code. — Tarskian

I wish you luck with your project. But I can't help feeling that that your project would be more relevant if the most important requirement was that the definition was correct. It would be handy if it could be implemented as source code, but that's definitely a secondary consideration.

We do not require that ("right all the time") from Google Translate either. It just needs to be correct "most of the time" or "substantially more often than not". — Tarskian

Who's we? Lawyers translating international treaties are not going to settle for "right most of the time". Nor engineers translating engineering manuals. Mind you, they can expect to be disappointed, since often no translation is correct. Translators of literature and poetry - and philosophy - frequently wrestle with this.

It is actually possible to detect if any particular sound is music or not, with a tool such as Spleeter from Deezer research: — Tarskian

The models available are:
Vocals (singing voice) / accompaniment separation (2 stems)
Vocals / drums / bass / other separation (4 stems)
Vocals / drums / bass / piano / other separation (5 stems) — Deezer Research - Sleeter

What a disappointment!
Tchaikovsky uses cannon-fire in the 1812 overture. Music? Not Music? Depends on the use the sound is put to.
If you tap a glass tumbler with a hard object, it makes a ringing sound. Whether that is music or not depends on what you do next.
It is quite usual for new forms of music to be rejected by many existing practitioners but to be accepted as time goes by. Jazz, is, of course, the classic example.

This approach will undoubtedly still require an underlying notion of what exactly to extract and summarize from the sample ("machine learning"), and therefore, what exactly matters when trying to distinguish philosophy from the alternative. — Tarskian

Yes, and no doubt they will produce excellent summaries of existing practice. Your sample will be, effectively the definition of philosophy of the person or people who collect and identify the sample. So a machine trained on philosophy up to 1900 may or may not correctly identify philosophy written a hundred years later. Any definition that catches existing practice is likely to fail in the face of new practices, so this approach needs constant updating by people who have classified the new material.

That would be compatible with the ChatGPT approach. — Tarskian

I have heard - perhaps I'm wrong - that there is a nasty problem lurking in ChatGPT. It picks up on racist or sexist language in its sample - and there's plenty of that, apparently - and adopts it as normal, since no-one has told it any different. But what makes language racist or sexist is not just a matter of vocabulary, but of use - even intent.

It would be handy if it could be implemented as source code, but that's definitely a secondary consideration. — Ludwig V

As other users pointed and me initially, the concept he is describing is already perfectly called 'metalanguage'. If his redefinition is adopted, we lose the word 'philosophy' and 'metalanguage' becomes redundant.

Refining definitions is okay if done in an educated fashion, many scientific and philosophical terms out there would benefit from refinement; but changing definitions altogether is sophomoric unless you are Terence Tao or Stephen Hawking.

Not only that problem, but also the word 'philosophy' doesn't exist only in English; in fact, it is not even an English word.

Refining definitions is okay if done in an educated fashion, many scientific and philosophical terms out there would benefit from refinement; but changing definitions altogether is sophomoric unless you are Terence Tao or Stephen Hawking. — Lionino

I agree that refining definitions can be useful, though much depends on whether the refined definition is useful or helpful in some way, in the context in which is to be applied. Even changing definitions for terms that are to be used in a specific context may be acceptable. But it turns out that this definition has an agenda - as many other proferred definitions of philosophy do. But they at least have a philosophical agenda. This definition is not in pursuit of a project that I would consider philosophical.

Not only that problem, but also the word 'philosophy' doesn't exist only in English; in fact, it is not even an English word. — Lionino

You are right that philosophy doesn't exist only in English. One assumes that the term has a recognizably similar meaning at least in other European languages. But I can't understand why you think it isn't an English word. The fact that it was originally a compound word in ancient Greek seems to me to be irrelevant. The fact that it may overlap to a greater or lesser extent with parallel words in other languages is more relevant, but doesn't mean it is not an English word. Though, perhaps, it depends on you criterion for which are to count as English.

But I can't understand why you think it isn't an English word. — Ludwig V

You can.

But I can't understand why you think it isn't an English word.
— Ludwig V
You can. — Lionino

Sorry. Let me put it a different way. Why do you think that "philosophy" isn't an English word?

If I were to say "'Democrazia' non è una parola italiana.", every awake person in Italy who finished school would know what I am talking about. I don't think it is the case that you are half-asleep right now or that the average Italian is much smarter than you, so I think you know very well what I meant by my statement.

I don't understand you responses to my statements. Seems like you're just stretching your definition to fit my examples. — T Clark

As soon as you can write the sentence as one that contains the pattern K(#S), i.e. a property of a statement, it is philosophical.

Asserting a property of a statement is a statement about a statement.

It works out of the box for Tao and Kant's general assertion about knowledge.

As soon as you can write the sentence as one that contains the pattern K(#S), i.e. a property of a statement, it is philosophical. — Tarskian

That doesn't make any sense. No need to take this any further.

But I can't help feeling that that your project would be more relevant if the most important requirement was that the definition was correct. — Ludwig V

The notion of Haar-like feature is not even a particularly good definition for "visual object". It is good enough, however, to build systems with that recognize faces in a crowd.

Better underlying notions would lead to better object recognition. It would undoubtedly fail less often.

What does not work, however, is perfectionism. Perfect is the enemy of good.

Lawyers translating international treaties are not going to settle for "right most of the time". — Ludwig V

They would obviously not use automated translation. But then again, automated translation can still speed up the work of a human translator. In the 10% of the time that it is inadequate, he will correct the output.

Tchaikovsky uses cannon-fire in the 1812 overture. Music? Not Music? Depends on the use the sound is put to. — Ludwig V

Perfect is the enemy of good. Should Deezer research improve Spleeter for that? Not sure about that ...

So a machine trained on philosophy up to 1900 may or may not correctly identify philosophy written a hundred years later. — Ludwig V

Language also changes. English today is not exactly the same language as in the 16th century.

The need to adjust things to changing definitions is a good problem to have. It means that the system already works for the existing situation. That is not necessarily future-proof, but that is rather a problem to fix if and when it occurs.

That doesn't make any sense. No need to take this any further. — T Clark

That doesn't make any sense ... to you. If you understood it, it would.

Yup.

changing definitions altogether — Lionino

There is no definition for the term philosophy. There is only a large collection of (partially failed) attempts.

Replacing the existing alternative definition "thinking about thinking" by "statement about statement" has the tangible advantage that it becomes an eminently computable definition. At that point, a machine can do it too.

The goal is to supply a functional underlying notion usable for the purpose of machine learning.

We have tools for object recognition, music detection, and many other discrimination and classification software systems. A computable definition for philosophy would allow us to pick philosophical statements out of their textual environment.

There is no definition for the term philosophy. — Tarskian

:roll:

But Pythagoras was the first person who invented the term
Philosophy, and who called himself a philosopher; when he was conversing
at Sicyon with Leon, who was tyrant of the Sicyonians or of the
Phliasians (as Heraclides Ponticus relates in the book which he wrote
about a dead woman); for he said that no man ought to be called wise,
but only God. For formerly what is now called philosophy (φιλοσοφία) was
called wisdom (σοφία), and they who professed it were called wise men
(σοφοὶ), as being endowed with great acuteness and accuracy of mind; but
now he who embraces wisdom is called a philosopher (φιλόσοφος).

has the tangible advantage that it becomes an eminently computable definition — Tarskian

The word philosophy doesn't have to be computable any more than the word 'dog' does.

The word philosophy doesn't have to be computable any more than the word 'dog' does. — Lionino

One example for the computability of the term "dog":

https://www.cvedia.com/animal-detection

Animal and wildlife detection using CVEDIA-RT.

Deep learning powered by synthetic data

What is animal detection ‍using deep learning.

Animal detection involves finding wildlife or pets in photos or videos. Traditional computer vision techniques, such as motion detection, caused false alarms and drained camera batteries, but deep learning has improved accuracy and added the ability to classify animal species. This is crucial for monitoring specific animals in the wild and alerting people to pests or predators.

Another example:

https://aimagelab.ing.unimore.it/imagelab/project.asp?idprogetto=49

A computer vision system for the evaluation of the behaviour and the well-being of the dogs housed in the shelter

The project, funded by the Ministry of Health, aims to develop a computer vision system that monitors the well-being of the dogs housed in shelters with the use of 3D images acquisition sensors. The system shall analyze automatically and continuously the behavior of dogs in the short and especially long-term, detecting anomalies that may be induced by a malaise of the animals, reporting alerts to the experts and staff.

There are massive research and development budgets for "dog" object-recognition and monitoring systems.

The budgets for the term "dog" are obviously dwarfed by the amount of money being invested in systems that revolve around the term "cattle" or "flock of hens".

If you want to get a better understanding of what the term "a lot of money" means, then look at the R & D budgets for agriculture.

The funny thing is that "statements about statements", i.e. philosophy, is absolutely pervasive in our use of abstractions. It touches everything. In my opinion, it even explains some of the metaphysics of the universe.

However, there are apparently no budgets for that.

I think that this is a wrong choice. Other systems would be so much more effective, if we came to grips with their common-most general underlying notion.

A computable definition for philosophy would allow us to pick philosophical statements out of their textual environment. — Tarskian

The only problem we have with picking philosophical statements out of their textual environment is that we don't agree what philosophy is. The machine will not help with that.
Indeed, the project itself will very likely throw up problems of its own. The difference between a sentence and a statement is precisely the environment (textual and otherwise). To extract a sentence from its textual environment would effectively prevent identifying philosophical statements.

They would obviously not use automated translation. But then again, automated translation can still speed up the work of a human translator. In the 10% of the time that it is inadequate, he will correct the output. — Tarskian

Doing a job badly, so that someone else has to check and correct the result is normally regarded as little better than not doing the job. But it the machine can do donkey-work and so help us out, that may be worth having. But it contributes nothing at all to defining philosophy.

A computer vision system for the evaluation of the behaviour and the well-being of the dogs housed in the shelter

Who decides what behaviour is problematic or when the dog's well-being is undermined? Not the machine, that's for sure. It may save donkey-work, but it isn't capable of telling us anything we don't know.

The need to adjust things to changing definitions is a good problem to have. It means that the system already works for the existing situation. That is not necessarily future-proof, but that is rather a problem to fix if and when it occurs. — Tarskian

My point is that the machine has to be adjusted to conform with human definitions. The machine does not define anything, but extrapolates something from whatever samples we offer it. The selection of the samples is, effectively, a definition.

I think you might find Wikipedia - Motte and Bailey Fallacy helpful.

As other users pointed and me initially, the concept he is describing is already perfectly called 'metalanguage'. If his redefinition is adopted, we lose the word 'philosophy' and 'metalanguage' becomes redundant. — Lionino

I agree with that.

If I were to say "'Democrazia' non è una parola italiana.", every awake person in Italy who finished school would know what I am talking about. I don't think it is the case that you are half-asleep right now or that the average Italian is much smarter than you, so I think you know very well what I meant by my statement. — Lionino

Whether I'm asleep or not is not the issue. It I did have ideas about why you are saying what you are saying, it is reasonable to confirm whether they are right before I start criticizing them. But apparently you don't want to do that. But, in general terms, my issue is whether you are wearing blinkers or not. This is a trivial issue about how "same word" is applied. it's not sufficiently interesting to bother with.

Who decides what behaviour is problematic or when the dog's well-being is undermined? Not the machine, that's for sure. It may save donkey-work, but it isn't capable of telling us anything we don't know. — Ludwig V

They have managed to convince the Ministry of Health that the project is worth doing and therefore worthwhile for them to fund it.

The thing with grant proposals is that you have to know what the other side is willing to pay for.

In fact, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are even much bigger spenders. When they get interested, they buy up the entire startup and add it to their growing collection of curiosa.

In the industry of building R&D curiosa, you have to be open minded.

I guess that 75% of the projects that I ever worked on, ultimately failed to achieve their objective, even though I preselected them for their potential for success, avoiding the potential frustration of initiatives that in my opinion could not possibly succeed.

If you are too critical, you don't do anything at all. In this industry, it means that you simply don't make any money either. I guess that my experience has made me biased towards more instead of less risk.

You may simply have to assume that the promotor of this project knows what he is doing. I don't know anything about dog behaviour, but I would just assume that the project owner does. Since someone else at the Ministry of Health is also willing to pay for the project owner's mistakes, I would give him the benefit of the doubt.

You may well be right. I couldn't possibly tell.

How is all this relevant for defining philosophy? How is this the relevant to philosophy in any way?

The origin for what I write, is of course, the foundational crisis in mathematics — Tarskian

Here we go again, assuming a stroll along an uneven path is the same as wandering through a minefield.

How is all this relevant for defining philosophy? How is this the relevant to philosophy in any way? — Ludwig V

:up:

How is all this relevant for defining philosophy? How is this the relevant to philosophy in any way? — Ludwig V

It was a direct answer to your question.

Your question about dog behavior may indeed not be directly relevant to the definition of philosophy.

All of this originally came up as a remark that the definition for"philosophy" does not need to be computable any more than the definition for "dog" needs to be

I pointed out that there are actually budgets for doing exactly that, i.e. computability of "dog".

Here we go again, assuming a stroll along an uneven path is the same as wandering through a minefield. — jgill

So, the idea is that the use of Godel numbering in a logic expression points to making use of the philosophical capability of the language and therefore turns the expression into a philosophical one. There may be exceptions, though.

It makes the notion of philosophy eminently computable. Computability is a requirement for machine learning.

In the meanwhile, I have discovered that this view is absolutely not new:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-philosophy/

Computational philosophy is the use of mechanized computational techniques to instantiate, extend, and amplify philosophical research. Computational philosophy is not philosophy of computers or computational techniques; it is rather philosophy using computers and computational techniques. The idea is simply to apply advances in computer technology and techniques to advance discovery, exploration and argument within any philosophical area.

Computational philosophy is deemed promising and useful:

There is one extremely promising area in need of development within computational philosophy, though that area may also call for changes in conceptions of philosophy itself. Philosophy has classically been conceived as abstract rather than concrete, as seeking understanding at the most general level rather than specific prediction or retrodiction, often normative, and as operating in terms of logical argument and analysis rather than empirical data. The last of these characteristics, and to some extent the first, will have to be qualified if computational philosophy grows to incorporate a major batch of contemporary techniques: those related to big data.

Hence, concerning your question, "How is this the relevant to philosophy in any way?", there is your answer, and it is called, "Computational philosophy". It is actually a gigantic subdiscipline.

Benzmüller, Christoph and David Fuenmayor, 2018, “Can Computers Help to Sharpen Our Understanding of Ontological Arguments?” in S. Gosh, R. Uppalari, K. Rao, V. Agarwal, and S. Sharma (eds.), Mathematics and Reality: Proceedings of the 11th All Indian Students’ Conference on Science and Spiritual Quest (AISSQ), Bhudabenswar, Kolkata: The Bhaktiedanta Institute, pp. 195–226.

Dennett, Daniel, 1979, “Artificial Intelligence as Philosophy and as Psychology”, in Philosophical Perspectives in Artificial Intelligence, Martin Ringle (ed.), Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, pp. 57–80.

Fitelson, Branden and Edward N. Zalta, 2007, “Steps Toward a Computational Metaphysics”, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 36(2): 227–247. doi:10.1007/s10992-006-9038-7

Grim, Patrick, Gary R. Mar, and Paul St. Denis, 1998, The Philosophical Computer: Exploratory Essays in Philosophical Computer Modeling, Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Horner, Jack K., 2019, “A Computationally Assisted Reconstruction of an Ontological Argument in Spinoza’s The Ethics”, Open Philosophy, (special issue on computational philosophy) 2(1): 211–229. doi:10.1515/opphil-2019-0012

Kirchner, Daniel, Christoph Benzmüller, and Edward N. Zalta, 2019, “Computer Science and Metaphysics: A Cross-Fertilization”, Open Philosophy, (special issue on computational philosophy) 2(1): 230–251. doi:10.1515/opphil-2019-0015

Oppenheimer, Paul E. and Edward N. Zalta, 2011, “A Computationally-Discovered Simplification of the Ontological Argument”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 89(2): 333–349. doi:10.1080/00048401003674482

Pence, Charles H. and Grant Ramsey, 2018, “How to Do Digital Philosophy of Science”, Philosophy of Science, 85(5): 930–941. doi:10.1086/699697

Rushby, John, 2018, “A Mechanically Assisted Examination of Begging the Question in Anselm’s Ontological Argument”, Journal of Applied Logics, 5(7): 1473–1496.

Shults, F. LeRon, 2019, “Computer Modeling in Philosophy of Religion”, Open Philosophy, (special issue on computer modeling in philosophy) 2(1): 108–125. doi:10.1515/opphil-2019-0011

Thagard, Paul, 1988, Computational Philosophy of Science, Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Van Den Hoven, Jeroen and Gert‐Jan Lokhorst, 2002, “Deontic Logic and Computer‐Supported Computer Ethics”, Metaphilosophy, 33(3): 376–386. doi:10.1111/1467-9973.00233

Wheeler, Billy, 2019, “Computer Simulations in Metaphysics: Possibilities and Limitations,” Manuscrito, 42(3): 108–148

Godel numbering could actually be to computational philosophy what the haar-like feature is to computer-based visual object recognition.

Here we go again, assuming a stroll along an uneven path is the same as wandering through a minefield. — jgill


So, the idea is that the use of Godel numbering in a logic expression points to making use of the philosophical capability of the language and therefore turns the expression into a philosophical one. There may be exceptions, though. — Tarskian

I was just commenting on your referring to "a foundational crises in mathematics". I doubt many mathematicians would agree there is a "crises". Concerns perhaps.

I suspect

"a foundational crises in mathematics" — jgill

is to be understood as "I don't get it!"

I was just commenting on your referring to "a foundational crises in mathematics". I doubt many mathematicians would agree there is a "crises". Concerns perhaps. — jgill

I actually did not invent the term "foundational crisis of mathematics" by myself:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_mathematics

The foundational crisis of mathematics arose at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century with the discovery of several paradoxes or counter-intuitive results.

Several schools of philosophy of mathematics were challenged with these problems in the 20th century, and are described below.

These problems were also studied by mathematicians, and this led to establish mathematical logic as a new area of mathematics,

They even write entire books about the foundational crisis of mathematics:

Ferreiros, J. (2008), Gowers, Timothy (ed.), "The Crisis in the Foundations of Mathematics", Princeton Companion to Mathematics, Princeton University Press, retrieved 2022-08-26

Robič, Borut (2015), Robič, Borut (ed.), "The Foundational Crisis of Mathematics", The Foundations of Computability Theory, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 9–30, doi:10.1007/978-3-662-44808-3_2, ISBN 978-3-662-44808-3, S2CID 124817202, retrieved 2022-08-26

Statements don't talk.

I suspect
"a foundational crises in mathematics"
— jgill
is to be understood as "I don't get it!" — Banno

The term can be traced back to Russell's criticism on Frege's publication on the foundations of mathematics:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foundations_of_Arithmetic

The Foundations of Arithmetic (German: Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik) is a book by Gottlob Frege, published in 1884, which investigates the philosophical foundations of arithmetic.

Although Bertrand Russell later found a major flaw in Frege's Basic Law V (this flaw is known as Russell's paradox, which is resolved by axiomatic set theory), the book was influential in subsequent developments, such as Principia Mathematica.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_paradox

Russell wrote to Frege about the paradox just as Frege was preparing the second volume of his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik.

Frege then wrote an appendix admitting to the paradox,[17] and proposed a solution that Russell would endorse in his Principles of Mathematics,[18] but was later considered by some to be unsatisfactory.[19]

It is Godel's incompleteness theorem (1931) that eventually proved that the foundational crisis cannot be solved.

Statements don't talk. — creativesoul

The idea revolves around a statement making use of the Godel numbering capability in its language to refer to another statement or even to itself.

This capability is a prerequisite for a language to be its own metalanguage and hence to be capable of philosophy.

In first-order arithmetic it is relatively easy to detect the use of Godel numbering. If the Godel numbering symbol appears anywhere in the expression, then the expression is -- according to this definition -- philosophical.