Talk:Mechanical philosophy

Untitled
this article needs help. everything written is uncited and not trustworthy.

"Godelian argument" is not clear
The argument says:


 * Some scholars have debated over what, if anything, Gödel's incompleteness theorems imply about anthropic mechanism. Much of the debate centers on whether the human mind is equivalent to a Turing machine, or by the Church-Turing thesis, any finite machine at all. If it is, and if the machine is consistent, then Gödel's incompleteness theorems would apply to it.

Now it is not clear what does it mean for a machine to be "consistent" i wonder myself, dont you?(consistency is a property about first order theories not machines). I think this point should be expained better.--Pokipsy76 14:51, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, the idea is that a theory can be represented by a machine that given a first order sentence as an input returns true/false iff that sentence is in the theory (or does not halt if it is undecidable). This perhaps can be explained better... -SpuriousQ (talk) 08:35, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, a theory can be represented by a machine but not every machine do represent a theory so what does it mean for a generic machine to be consistent?--Pokipsy76 08:51, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Why quote a bad philosopher?
About the quote:

Let T be a Turing machine which "represents" me in the sense that T can prove just the mathematical statements I prove. Then using Gödel's technique I can discover a proposition that T cannot prove, and moreover I can prove this proposition. This refutes the assumption that T "represents" me, hence I am not a Turing machine.

This is an obvious and trivial contradiction. "T can prove just the mathematical statements I prove" followed by "I can discover a proposition that T cannot prove" He defines T as able to prove anything he can prove then says that it in fact cannot (contradicting his own definition). He is crazy and does not warrant a direct quotation in wikipedia. J. R. Lucas is a far better philosopher on the subject. What about:

We can use [the argument]. . . against those who, finding a formula their first machine cannot produce as being true, concede that that machine is indeed inadequate, but thereupon seek to construct a second, more adequate, machine, in which the formula can be produced as true. This they can indeed do: but then the second machine will have a Godelian formula all of its own, constructed by applying Godel's procedure to the formal system which represents its (the second machine's) own enlarged scheme of operations. And this formula the second machine will not be able to produce as being true, while a mind will be able to see that it is true.... And so it will go on. However complicated a machine we construct, it will, if it is a machine, correspond to a formal system, which in turn will be liable to the Godel procedure for finding a formula unprovable-in-that-system. This formula the machine will be unable to produce as being true, although a mind can see that it is true. And so the machine will still not be an adequate model of the mind.... the mind always has the last word. (Lucas [I96I], p. 48)

I even have a REFERENCE!

LUCAS, J. R. [I96I]: 'Minds, Machines and Godel', Philosophy, 36, pp. I I2-I7, reprinted in A. R. Anderson (ed.) [I964]: Minds and Machines. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. --138.130.86.193 (talk) 19:24, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

what happened to universal mechanism
The article maintains that the philosophy of universal mechanism has fallen from favor, but doesn't provide any of the arguments that led to its fall. It should. Leotohill (talk) 21:22, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Original research
I've added the original research template to this page due to the severe lack of source citations and the pedagogical tone of particularly the first 2/3 of the article. Kevphenry (talk) 06:54, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I just revised the opening paragraph. While this helps a little, the article's tone is still rather doctrinaire, e.g., the parochial sense of "metaphysics" in the second paragraph. JKeck (talk) 17:24, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

"Anthropic mechanism" as original research
The phrase "anthropic mechanism" does not show up in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I think that is an adequate reason to delete the whole section from the article as original research. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:45, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

The article has been renamed in line with normal terminology in history of science, and edited in such a way as to make the sections easier to reference. This is all in aid of cleanup - please drop me a talk page note if there are issues arising. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:23, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Mechanical philosophy, as you say, "is a term for an aspect of the scientific revolution of Early Modern Europe". But this article was about mechanism which goes back to ancient Greece. Most of the links are pointing to Mechanism (philosophy) and only two pointing to Mechanical Philosophy. Maybe spin off Mechanical philosophy (which has plenty of links) into a separate article? —Machine Elf 1735  00:32, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Interpretation in Mechanism and Determinism
This section needs to have the interpretation removed due to a misunderstanding of Chaos:

"Later mechanists believed the achievements of the scientific revolution of the 17th century had shown that all phenomenon could eventually be explained in terms of "mechanical laws": natural laws governing the motion and collision of matter that imply a determinism. Yet it doesn't, because a simple mechanical mathematical system can still exhibit disorder in a chaotic way, and therefore have unpredictable behavior (ex: the weather, neuron networks, the solar system, etc)."

"simple mechanical mathematical system can still exhibit disorder in a chaotic way"

The system can only exhibit its properties. Those properties appear chaotic because one does not have enough information to make predictions, not because they are random.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory#cite_note-2

Kellert, Stephen H. (1993). In the Wake of Chaos: Unpredictable Order in Dynamical Systems. University of Chicago Press. p. 32. ISBN 0-226-42976-8.

Storris (talk) 18:14, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Sources of Criticism section and additional points
On the whole, I like the new Criticism section Championmin has added. That said, it could use some improvement. Most notably it needs English-language, as opposed to Arabic-language or Persian-language, references. Also, while the points seem to be largely from point of view of revealed religion. In themselves, these critiques are apt, but I'm pretty sure there are more critiques from other perspectives that should be added. The philosophy has internal problems as well. JKeck (talk) 15:22, 17 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Clearly whoever wrote that section is theologically inclined, but saying "it cannot account for God" in a critique of mechanistic materialism is a presupposition of the existence of Deity and, more specifically, of the biblical worldview, especially with nonsense phrases about mechanical philosophy denying the agency of God in the world as described in Genesis. His (non-English, on an English wiki) sources do not come from any reputable philosophers, either. There are many critics in the philosophical tradition quite opposed to mechanical reductionism, even some within the materialist school, like Bacon, Locke, Condillac, Helvetius, and Marx. The whole section needs to be re-written, and if you want to include theological opposition to mechanical philosophy in the updated version, include references from actual philosophers of religion: there are many idealists (who are by definition opposed to materialism or naturalism) to be found among them. 2601:1C2:4301:9E80:1509:BC23:2FF8:365F (talk) 18:21, 15 December 2022 (UTC)