2023.10.25
The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent upon each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is--insofar as it is thinkable at all--primitive and muddled.
The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he is.
Nary a mathematician I have spoken with has a good word to say about Wittgenstein. One particularly incensed mathematician I know characterized Wittgenstein's famous proposition 7: Whereof we cannot speak we must remain silent as "accomplishing the difficult task of being at once portentous and vacuous."
Platonism isn't of course tantamount to religion or mysticism, but there are affinities.
As one textbook on psychopathology puts it: "Delusions may be systematized into highly developed and rationalized schemes which have a high degree of internal consistency once the basic premise is granted. . . . The delusion frequently may appear logical, although exceedingly intricate and complex."
Paranoia isn't the abandonment of rationality. Rather, it is rationality run amuck, the inventive search for explanations turned relentless. A psychologist friend of mine put it this way: "A paranoid person is irrationally rational. . . . Paranoid thinking is characterized not by illogic, but by a misguided logic, by logic run wild."
Early this morning I was woken up with this dream snippet song:
(I later made the voice memo a video with a random HONK!fest photo I had on hand that look suitably cheerfully apocalyptic.)