tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post6007427315505272749..comments2024-03-22T06:22:08.010+00:00Comments on Stephen Law: Magdalen College Oxford last night - THINK week.Stephen Lawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02167317543994731177noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-64042765331669437552012-11-12T10:34:51.606+00:002012-11-12T10:34:51.606+00:00This comment has been removed by the author.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-27624992882911304952012-11-12T10:34:11.804+00:002012-11-12T10:34:11.804+00:00This comment has been removed by the author.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-83539177149242761372012-11-12T10:32:31.240+00:002012-11-12T10:32:31.240+00:00Stephen,
regarding the “mirror problem”, there’s a...Stephen,<br />regarding the “mirror problem”, there’s a video on YouTube ft Richard Feynman commenting on it, which you might find interesting. here’s the link:<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msN87y-iEx0Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-67560112438730196072012-10-20T20:06:29.326+00:002012-10-20T20:06:29.326+00:00[...continued]
How do the words left/right work? ...[...continued]<br /><br />How do the words left/right work? My left is the direction which has a certain angular orientation relative to the way I'm facing. This explains why my left side is opposite my mirror image's right side: left is defined relative to the way one is facing and my mirror image is facing the opposite way from me. Top and bottom are not relative to the way I'm facing, and so the same does not apply to them.<br /><br />That should be enough to resolve the apparent paradox. But I'll add something more about the meaning of top/bottom, because I disagree with Will on that point. Will says that we define top as "towards the ceiling". I don't think that's correct in this context. I could pose just the same puzzle if I was looking in a mirror while lying on my side. I would still want to contrast my head/feet axis with my left/right axis, even though it would then be my left and right which are towards the ceiling and floor. I would probably still refer to my head side as my top.<br /><br />That said, I don't think my top side is defined purely by its physical characteristics (such as the presence of my head). The reason I call my head side my top is because that's the side which is <i>usually</i> pointing upward (against gravity). If I'd spent most of my life standing on my hands, it might be difficult to know which side to call my top. Is it the side which is usually pointing upward for me (the feet side) or the side which is usually pointing upward for most people (the head side)? There's no right answer to that. Standing on one's hands is unusual enough that no conventional usage has been established for those circumstances.Richard Weinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18095903892283146064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-5323433211197490762012-10-20T20:05:43.678+00:002012-10-20T20:05:43.678+00:00Hi. I've just come here via Stephen's post...Hi. I've just come here via Stephen's post at the Secular Outpost, and thought I'd add something, even though the discussion's a bit old.<br /><br />I've thought about the mirror question several times in the past, and never found an answer that satisfied me. This time I think I've come up with the right answer. And it's basically the same as Will's.<br /><br />Like many philosophical problems this one is the result of semantic confusion. We feel that what's true for left and right should be true for top and bottom because there seems no relevant difference between those pairs. Left and right refer to the two directions of my lateral axis; top and bottom refer to the two directions of my vertical axis; the two axes are both parallel to the mirror and there seems no relevant difference between them. But in fact left/right and top/bottom are significantly different concepts. They don't just differ in terms of which axis they relate to. They both refer to directions on an axis, but they don't refer to them in the same way. (I would call this a distinction between sense and reference.)<br /><br />Suppose we just think of my body as having 4 sides in the plane parallel to the mirror. I'll refer to them by means of physical features: head, feet, heart and appendix, where the heart side is what we would usually call the left side and the appendix side is what we would usually call the right side. I'm choosing this terminology so as to treat all directions in the same way. I don't want to privilege the head and feet sides by calling them "ends", and I want to avoid for now the problematic terms "left" and "right". Our bilateral symmetry normally causes us to treat the head-feet axis differently from the heart-appendix axis, and that's what leads to our semantic confusion here.<br /><br />When we adopt this unbiased terminology we see that neither pair of sides is reversed in the mirror. My heart side is opposite my mirror image's heart side, just as my head side is opposite my mirror image's head side. Still, my left and right sides get "reversed" in the sense that my left side is opposite my mirror image's right side. So the same two sides do or don't get "reversed" depending on whether I call them left/right or heart/appendix. That's why I say the problem is one of semantic confusion. But I can't find any words that cause the head/feet sides to be reversed in any way, because we don't have any words that relate to those sides in the way that the words left/right relate to the heart/appendix sides. The words top/bottom just don't work that way.<br /><br />[continued...]Richard Weinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18095903892283146064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-27099297310255999942012-05-28T15:24:39.223+00:002012-05-28T15:24:39.223+00:00Thanks Will. See my comment February 22, 2012 11:2...Thanks Will. See my comment February 22, 2012 11:24 PM. That's the explanation for that asymmetry.<br /><br />David B - thanks - I hope the video of this will appear soon. I certainly enjoyed the exchange with Dawkins, Atkins and Swinburne....Stephen Lawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02167317543994731177noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-53657069808213017552012-05-28T14:59:26.466+00:002012-05-28T14:59:26.466+00:00I wrote one of the first Christian critiques of th...I wrote one of the first Christian critiques of the New Atheism, published in 2007. After several years of interacting with those who associate themselves with that school, I've come to recognize three related phenomena, which I am tempted to describe as laws. First, every Gnu who is a scientist, will make great use of philosophy in his or her public arguments against religion. (Often while disparaging philosophy.) Second, he or she will do so poorly. Third, the best defenses of atheism will be written by people with training in philosophy. <br /><br />So I am almost inclined to hope that the Dawkins-Atkins-Krausse "philosophy" of argumentation will win -- were it not for my occasional tendency (after Swinburne) to want to see opposing arguments in stronger forms. At the least, attacks by scientists on philosophy and theology (and sometimes history) seem generally to be signs of confused thinking. <br /><br />Though of course, philosophers make mistakes, too.David B Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04029133398946303654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-73210072596435998152012-03-18T07:28:31.336+00:002012-03-18T07:28:31.336+00:00Dr Law, to see why your explanation of the mirror ...Dr Law, to see why your explanation of the mirror problem fails, imagine you are wearing a ring on your left hand. The mirror image will be wearing a ring on his RIGHT hand, no matter how you try to rotate yourself into the mirror world (horizontal or vertical axis).Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02615855799727413456noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-56882232556418939012012-03-18T07:22:22.951+00:002012-03-18T07:22:22.951+00:00The mirror problem is a question about how we defi...The mirror problem is a question about how we define left and right, NOT a question thats actually about mirrors. <br /><br />Mirrors don't flip top-to-bottom because we define top as "towards the ceiling", and bottom as "towards the floor." We define left and right via an interplay of multiple directions (if I'm facing north, my right hand is east). <br /><br />The philosophical mirror puzzle can teach you a lot about what we mean by left and right. It teaches you nothing about mirrors. Philosophy is a fine tool for analyzing the abstract constructs that are human ideas. Its a less useful tool for exploring the outside world.Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02615855799727413456noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-63319849507030378382012-03-17T04:13:07.509+00:002012-03-17T04:13:07.509+00:00I do believe philosophy is a useful pursuit, but y...I do believe philosophy is a useful pursuit, but your mirror question is actually detracting from your case. We say that mirror images are reflected left to right because that is what we observe. Asking why they aren't reflected top to bottom is trying to manufacture a problem that doesn't exist. At best you can say that you are talking about how we perceive reflections and not the workings of how light reflects off a flat surface, but that is not how you framed the question.Impraxicalnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-11917751406250326242012-03-08T14:12:31.461+00:002012-03-08T14:12:31.461+00:00If you're trying to get the right answer (does...If you're trying to get the right answer (does the mirror image flip top and bottom in addition to left and right? no.) Then you're doing math/physics. If you're trying to find a set of words that will get rid of "bafflement", that's a psychology problem. Both are problems whose solutions can be verified empirically.<br /><br />I think, then, that philosophy is best thought of as a sort of psychological-linguistic engineering, rather than as something wholly separate than the sciences.<br /><br />(as a side note, the way a physicist would solve the problem: Let the mirror be the yz plane with the z axis pointing up. The mirror flips the x axis and not the other two. Left and right are not defined by the direction of the positive y axis, but are instead defined as a cross product of x and z, hence flipping either x or z, but not both, will flip left and right. Or more simply, up is a vector, left is a pseudovector.)Rayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07345409714343072179noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-55371075272403028622012-02-28T22:00:14.145+00:002012-02-28T22:00:14.145+00:00Hi Stephen,
I've really enjoyed watching your...Hi Stephen,<br /><br />I've really enjoyed watching your lectures and debates before, any idea when this one will become available and where I can find it on the internet? I've checked the THINK week site and a lot of stuff seemed not to have been posted. Thanks!<br /><br />-PeterPeterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16253729451185122494noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-77898093824631445982012-02-27T21:36:53.315+00:002012-02-27T21:36:53.315+00:00>Richard D's dislike of philosophy was appa...>Richard D's dislike of philosophy was apparent again, as was Peter Atkins's, so I was for a while fighting for philosophy alongside Richard Swinburne against Richard Dawkins.<br /><br />BTW. Whatever I think of your lame EGA for this act alone you I feel major major major respect for you.<br /><br />Kudos!<br /><br /> Anti-Philosophy Atheism is just Young Earth Creationism for Infidels. It's not an intelligent form of non-belief. By definition it is anti-intellectual.BenYachovhttp://www.catholic.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-33660509379053688762012-02-27T12:57:11.610+00:002012-02-27T12:57:11.610+00:00Here's what happens when philosophy and scient...Here's what happens when philosophy and scientific experimentation overlap:<br /><br />http://fauxphilnews.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/experimental-philosophy-gets-real/Jonnynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-54214051500353979502012-02-26T16:48:47.545+00:002012-02-26T16:48:47.545+00:00Thanks Octavia - glad you enjoyed it. Swinburne is...Thanks Octavia - glad you enjoyed it. Swinburne is certainly no fool.Stephen Lawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02167317543994731177noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-37392481928002261692012-02-26T15:39:30.271+00:002012-02-26T15:39:30.271+00:00Hello Dr Law,
I loved the debate, and it was brill...Hello Dr Law,<br />I loved the debate, and it was brilliant to be reminded about your evil God challenge after seeing you in London with William Lane Craig. <br />I think that it's important to have someone like you at the forefront of the fight for Philosophy, while Richard Swinburne might be criticised for doing so in defence of religion. If I make my offer I'll be going to Cambridge in October to read Philosophy, so it's important to have some good responses at the ready when people ask me about the importance (or lack of it) of the subject. <br /> In other news, I asked Richard Swinburne a question about how God can be omnipotent if he can't choose evil, and he gave a good answer about that being logically impossible. It did make me think, though, that Jesus' 40 days and 40 nights can't have been that bad, if he could only choose good- but perhaps the answer to that lies with the difference between God and Jesus.<br />Anyway, thank you again for a great debate!<br />OctaviaMildred Hubblehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02727630894808713281noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-13480535868610150232012-02-24T07:53:27.475+00:002012-02-24T07:53:27.475+00:00The most celebrated discovery of the 20th Century,...The most celebrated discovery of the 20th Century, Einstein’s theories of relativity, started off as thought experiments, which I would argue was pure philosophy, before any mathematics, let alone empirical verification, was involved. In fact, Einstein was arguably the master of the thought experiment.<br /><br />Regards, Paul.Paul P. Mealinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14573615711151742992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-83663073819193319542012-02-23T12:11:57.316+00:002012-02-23T12:11:57.316+00:00In this sentence:
"I think that when you und...In this sentence:<br /><br />"I think that when you understand philosophy, specially in its greek sense, you can't see it as an useless and separated field from philosophy. That's why my first interest in philosophy was thanks to the pressocratics."<br /><br />Where I wrote "from philosophy" I meant "from SCIENCE".<br /><br />Best wishes,André Assi Barretohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07678537107617283666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-34602258205315630142012-02-23T10:37:02.038+00:002012-02-23T10:37:02.038+00:00Is it science? Is it maths? No, I still think it&#...Is it science? Is it maths? No, I still think it's philosophy.<br /><br />The bafflement we feel - which Plato felt - is removed not by noting the mathematical relationship between the actual object and it's mirror image, nor by noting the scientific facts about how light behaves, etc. but by realizing that the asymmetry is generated by the assumptions we make in setting the problem up, and the resolution achieved by exposing those assumptions.<br /><br />As to *why we make* those assumptions, well now that is at least partly a scientific question, as Paul says. But that's not the same question/issue.Stephen Lawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02167317543994731177noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-87615435387245828292012-02-23T08:22:14.065+00:002012-02-23T08:22:14.065+00:00There is a continuous dialogue between science and...There is a continuous dialogue between science and philosophy that all scientists take part in, so I’m always bemused when they claim that they can manage without it. The best example is quantum mechanics, because the science of quantum mechanics is beyond dispute yet the philosophical implications have never been resolved and have stumped the greatest minds, including Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman.<br /><br />The issue about the mirror is that science provides the answer, not philosophy. As Paul J points out mirrors do not reverse top to bottom or right to left, but back to front. Mirrors are 2 dimensional but we live in 3 dimensions, and a mirror reverses everything along the dimension perpendicular to the plane of the mirror. This is a scientific fact, as is the fact that chirality is reversed.<br /><br />There is an illusion of left-to-right reversal because we normally have to rotate an object to see it reversed and we normally reverse objects along their vertical axis (as Stephen states). We are symmetrical about the vertical axis which contributes to the illusion. A mirror simply reverses without rotation.<br /><br />The point is that only science can provide the answer, and this is what separates philosophy from science, because philosophy deals with questions for which there are no definitive answers. And this is why some scientists, like Dawkins, Atkins, Hawking and Feynman (now deceased) are dismissive of philosophy. But there are scientists who do explore philosophical questions, like Paul Davies, Roger Penrose and Douglas Hofstadter.<br /><br />Regards, Paul.Paul P. Mealinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14573615711151742992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-84687224231935003022012-02-23T01:51:52.147+00:002012-02-23T01:51:52.147+00:00I am usually not one to criticise science over phi...I am usually not one to criticise science over philosophy but I think that both Dawkins and Atkins are way out of line to criticise philosophy in the way that they have.<br /><br />I surfing the Net recently and I found an article that featured Dr. Mary Midgley (whom Andre has mentioned) stating in an interview that "Dawkins is very angry with anyone who says there are mysteries, but science cannot answer some questions. We raise all sorts of questions beyond the material world. Then it's understanding we're after rather than information. These are not questions like 'is there a box on the table?' but questions of inner life, that can't be settled in the lab."<br /><br />I think Prof. Swinburne was fundamentally correct when he said (something along the lines of) the question of which approach (philosophy or science) is the more appropriate in tackling a particular question is itself a philosophical one. To add to Prof. Swinburne's point, I think that if Dawkins (and, perhaps, Atkins) can claim that philosophy is "just thinking", you'd think that they would have came up with some scientific, empirical evidence to support their claims by now.<br /><br />We should also not forget that the first advocates and practitioners of the scientific method during the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries were eminent philosophers such as Sir Francis Bacon. Simply put, without philosophers such as Sir Francis Bacon in the first place, it is very likely that the scientific method would not have advanced as quickly as it has.<br /><br />Thus, I contend that the criticisms raised against philosophy by both Prof. Richard Dawkins and Prof. Peter Atkins are very much mis-guided.<br /><br />Furthermore, I would think that both professors are also very much out of their depth insofar as philosophy is concerned. This is very evident especially in Prof. Dawkin's book, The God Delusion, which I very much enjoyed reading. While Prof. Dawkins used very accessible science (at least on the Net) and expressed in a very appealing way, his articulation of the arguments for theism and his attempts to refute them were less than impressive. It is no wonder professional philosophers like Prof. William Lane Craig would criticise the book as "hollow". I also would think that Prof. Dawkins' lack of background in philosophy is perhaps one of the reasons he has continually refused to debate Prof. Craig.ReventonRagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14531637631562699652noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-14189252697486634352012-02-23T01:30:26.070+00:002012-02-23T01:30:26.070+00:00Also, a mirror in front of you will invert front/b...Also, a mirror in front of you will invert front/back, as Paul J said. A mirror to your side will invert left/right, a mirror underneath you up/down.<br /><br />Perhaps your confusion is coming from imagining something like a webcam image? If the mirror in front of you didn't reflect or rotate the image at all, you would see the back of your head.Heresiarchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10248779734097499255noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-67386662023057441002012-02-23T00:45:38.200+00:002012-02-23T00:45:38.200+00:00Stephen law is correct in what he's saying abo...Stephen law is correct in what he's saying about the mirror, but he has phrased it somewhat confusingly. Perhaps I can clarify.<br /><br />Choose an ordered triple of orthogonal vectors and call them "up" "forward" and "right" respectively. This is your left handed system. If you replace "right" with it's opposite "left", you get a right handed system. However, you can also get to a right handed system by replacing "up" with it's opposite, "down".<br /><br />My point? A transition from a left handed to a right handed system can be accomplished by exchanging up and down instead of left and right.<br /><br />This might be more obvious if you think about what you see when you stand on a mirror.<br /><br />However, this has nothing to do with philosophy and is just maths. I did my undergraduate degree in mathematics and philosophy, for what it's worth.Heresiarchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10248779734097499255noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-73469613470119196342012-02-22T23:28:41.694+00:002012-02-22T23:28:41.694+00:00PS the punchline to the above is that your explana...PS the punchline to the above is that your explanation of why mirror reversal is left/right but not top/bottom fails.Stephen Lawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02167317543994731177noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-37337596356270501312012-02-22T23:24:27.677+00:002012-02-22T23:24:27.677+00:00"Surely that is a matter of empirical evidenc..."Surely that is a matter of empirical evidence."<br /><br />Yes it is. So is the fact that Bert is a bachelor. Yet from that fact I can deduce, a priori, from the comfort of my armchair, that Bert is unmarried. As I say, you seem to be missing the point...<br /><br />"Because if you turn a glove inside out, it changes from left-handed to right handed."<br /><br />True, but that's because our left and right hands (and indeed sides) are indeed fairly close mirror images of each other (whereas our tops and bottoms are obviously not)<br /><br />But now imagine beings whose tops and bottoms are mirror images of each other - that are like hands pointing up and down from a shared wrist). By turning inside out their top-half glove-like-clothes, they end up with glove-clothes that fit only their bottom halves.<br /><br />You say that inside-out mirror reversal of your left glove reverses it from left to right, not top to bottom. But these hypothetical beings will say that such inside-out, mirror reversal of their glove-shaped top-half clothing reverses that clothing (same shape as your left glove) not left to right, but top to bottom. It now only fits their bottom half.Stephen Lawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02167317543994731177noreply@blogger.com