the bit about astrologists handling being wrong better was great.
Reminded of a bit in Julia Galef’s book where she advocates “updated my
priors” over “I was wrong”
Being fair: I said “serious proposition” not “place”
I hope I would never be seen as in the service of making SneerClub a “serious place”, it’s just that a shocking amount of dirt on these people happens to turn up in the sub
A lot of this is stuff that’s been gestating in my head for a while as things other people perhaps haven’t noted. Maybe I’ll write a book about it one day when I don’t have to regularly spend hours at the hospital, or on a zoom call. I was surprised people found it hard to follow those links so maybe I should have thought harder about making my inner mind more explicitly outer: in the best possible interpretation maybe I said something genuinely interesting instead of the boilerplate I thought I was coming in with.
Oh yeah, to be clear from my very limited knowledge I think there are ties there given the de-politicized direction of positivism after the Vienna circle. My knowledge of analytic philosophy's history sorta ends at Popper though.
Anecdotally, due to the misleading notions of Analytic Philosophy out there I had assumed the Vienna Circle was like the Austrian School of economics but for Philosophy until I read from them and Liam Bright.
So I did wish for a bit more detail there but its not a big issue! (esp a lot to cover in one podcast episode) When you do have it in a book / blog or wherever would be neat to see for sure.
So, I will say that to my knowledge there was always a de-politicised Vienna Circle: Schlick was never Red Vienna political like Neurath or talking about humanism with Bauhaus like Carnap; Victor Kraft was his own thing entirely.
But I’m with you on the overall picture that there are these misleading notions about the origins of Analytic Philosophy, although my through-route to that (before I began to specialise in Philosophy of Science) was with my IRL friend Nathan Oseroff-Spicer, who is similarly a twitter famous philosophy of science guy like Liam Bright, although more than arguably Nathan is more twitter notorious than twitter famous (for righteously shitting on Kathleen Stock).
I would have loved to give more detail, but we were time-constrained and giving an overview of a few very disparate but to my mind very connected topics, and I honestly don’t think Aaron was quite prepared for the degree to which I would try to link those up - which is no bag on him at all, but I had a lot of material to get through and I myself didn’t realise quite how much going back over sources I’d have to do to build a full docket, which would anyway have been six hours of an interview at best.
When it comes to rationalists I’m often tempted to just say “seriously, we have all this stuff collated on the sub” but there’s also a lot of material in the background that isn’t always easy even for me to find, even if I wrote it.
Your correction is right there, depoliticized vs politicized or work/politics separation was contentious within the circle. Poor word choice on my part. I'm still just an undergrad who is very new to it. David Edmonds book on the Circle is sort of my go-to source.
I guess what I had in mind was that post-circle that debate did not really exist and the Neurath / Carnap approach was less appreciated until relatively recently. (Carnap's work did heavily influence Analytic Feminism according to a prof of mine.) Weariness of political persecution within the circle as Vienna got more fascist / Schlick's murder / fleeing Vienna. Mentioned by both Bright and Edmunds
No, I completely agree and I wouldn’t even call it a “correction” as such. My high school/early undergrad education certainly gave the AJ Ayer picture from *Language, Truth, and Logic* by way of his descendants, as I think was very much the standard for several decades in most Anglo departments where Analytic Philosophy and the inheritance of logical positivism/empiricism, with a dusting of historical context from people who know better.
That was fun! Just listened to it while playing some Tetris, which…
not really relevant in any regard other than Tetris being a great combo
with podcasts?
Also sorry I never got to namecheck my esteemed friend David Gerard.
It was on my script but I got navigated away from that in the interview
and we ran out of time.
the bit about astrologists handling being wrong better was great. Reminded of a bit in Julia Galef’s book where she advocates “updated my priors” over “I was wrong”
I’ve only listened to a few minutes, but I assume a “Congrats, George” is called for.
Edit: I changed my mind. Sneerclub is not, and never has been, a serious place.
Ive never heard the positivist -> neorationalism connection so surprised my ears a bit hearing Neurath brought up so close to libertarianism.
That was fun! Just listened to it while playing some Tetris, which… not really relevant in any regard other than Tetris being a great combo with podcasts?
“And SneerClub, and austerity economics”
Also sorry I never got to namecheck my esteemed friend David Gerard. It was on my script but I got navigated away from that in the interview and we ran out of time.
How can free will be real if our eyes aren’t real?
Anyway I liked it.
Damn, beat me to posting it by 5 minutes
I’m shocked u/noactuallyitspoptart you’re a Humean?? Cleanse yourself of these thoughts and embrace realism ;)