|||| Godel and The American Constitution

There has been much talk of Godel's comment on the American Constitution as reflected in many blogs. There are two points that need to be made clear to those outside Logic and Mathematics. These points are referred to in the following comment on Jeffery Kegler's postings on the same topic. (http://jeffreykegler.blogspot.com/2008/11/kurt-gdel-contradiction-in-us.html)

1. Godel was primarily a Logician and philosopher of Mathematics and its Foundation. He was a theoretician of the highest order. It was Godel who proved the limitations of Russell's monumental work, Pricipia Mathematica.

2. For Godel, Mathematical Logic and Philosophy were not merely abstract subject-matter but fields of study that were applicable to the real-world.

Logic and Reasoning are together central to Philosophy. And, Philosophy is highly general sort of account of the world on an abstract level. There are no limitations on the range of Philosophy's interest. It is from this stance, as it were, dual but one, perspective that Godel would have viewed the American Constitution.

It is, in a way, an old-fashioned sort of way to look at the world, but, that way will never disappear from out modes of understanding the world. Philosophy is close to us, even it we don't know it.

Here is a copy of my post on his blogspot.

"Thanks for your blog on Godel and the American Constitution. I think your contribution is valuable in giving a context to Godel's legal thinking on the subject. We may say, with Wittgenstein, that Godel was a human being before he was a logician. But, Godel would have used the word "prove" in the quoted dialogue as a logician. The consequences of the American Constitution within practical reason is thus to be found in the history of the creation of that marvelous document. The consequences within theoretical reason is the province of the theory of logic in which Godel himself was among the finest ever. It would have been irresistible for Godel not to view it in this theoretical setting."

21st Century's Political Theory

What should be the Political Theory of the 21st century? What sort of theoretical content it must have? It clearly cannot be anything like those of the past couple of centuries, which, have proved to be abysmal. 

A century of Communism, to take one such theory is more than enough thank you ! and what has it produced other than countless disputes, wars, dictatorships of unimaginable power and brutality. Those who advocate it for its merit, must admit it has not worked. Capitalism (which covers myriad systems) may not have been as successful as we would like it to be. But in combination with a sustained, fair democracy it is the best we have got. Have we achieved with either system, in JS Mills' words, the happiness of the greatest number? The answer is that doubtless we are happier by far than regimes that have or live under Communism. 

Philosophically, Communism , its grounding, it has always seemed to me, for all its idealism and romanticism, shallow, reductionist and devoid of proper foundations. I knew instinctively it was false as a system of ideas. And so obviously so. (At a personal level while at the university communists hated me because of my aristocratic background. And, some detested my name because it sounded royal. (I wonder what would have happened to me if they had realized that not only my name sounded royal but I was a member of a vast royal-family progeny who are american citizens and who have historically gravitated towards USA) 

Now with the benefit and agony of the past under our belts, with so many strands of developments in Sciences, Philosophy, Technology, Literature and Criticism, we are perhaps, with optimism, in a position to construct new political theories for the 21t C. Ones that could encompass the vastness that is the recent world of human beings. A connected world in which change is instantaneous propagating across many layers of human life.

What should our Ethics be in a world that we barely understand, if we understand it at all; and how should our morality be viewed? This is a deep problem requiring a profoundly thought-out solution.

We live in a world that is complex and everything is complicated. There are no easy answers and complex answers do not have a firm theoretical basis for them to be accepted as valid. When they are evidently valid, we do not know how to persuade others of its validity. This is so with regards to climate change. It betokens a future that may indeed be the end of life as we know it.

Our modes of conversation and dialogue, what conversation we take part in, how we converse when it comes to the problems of the "recent world" simply breaks down. Why are ordinary conversations as to matters of fact or probable and possible facts are no longer possible?

To be continued ... 

How Obama Nearly Lost His Grooves

How Obama nearly lost his grooves is an account of the rise of a remarkable man whose every part is written in the language of travail. His ascent through the ranks of social order, the impossible odds of saving an economy that went into historical meltdown from a melange of greed in a macroeconomic and financial system that continues to make no sense from any angle.

What is this brilliant young president to do, when, in fact, there appears not to exist even theoretical solutions to what he is facing. But even if there were -- let's call these "broad enveloping solutions", the ones that in a hyper-general manner of all economic theorizing, makes sense -- there is the utterly bizarre Republican Party to deal with. A party that is not merely gone gaga-irrational. It is indescribable.

In listening to the political and economic commentary, I find, on rare occasions a measure of validity or reliability. And that in the writings of (unbearably shy) Paul Krugman.

Paul Krugman's qualities are those I admire: magnificent thoroughness, fairness, openness, hard work to the point of, at times, seeming as having long ago personally withered; his honesty which gives coherence to the intention of his writings is nonetheless bogged by the problem of complexity and inherent unmanageability of a world whose contents and contours were never anticipated.

There is simply this massive problem: the Economics for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize no longer applies to the economic system the world has, all of a sudden, inherited.

The mathematics and logics of the system that is our present-day world has not been worked out; and this is so at several levels of description. He couldn't, on this view, say anything that might stand good (I shouldn't say, what is now eons away, 'old fashioned' ) criticism. When his comments are valid they are inapplicable since an account of their relevance and application resides in a theory that does not (yet) exists.

This is the peculiarity of the ultra-postmodern, in a nutshell: its patterns are meaningless since they cannot be mapped into an interpretive universe.

So Obama didn't just have to deal with, as his luck would have it, Republican beligeranti but, as I pointed out, a whole lot more, insolvabilia and their consequences. He is now 'guilty' of sincerely having tried to solve the problems before him as he had promised during those magic moments which brought tears to everyone's eyes.

He should've, many would say, fudged the issues, played politics as usual and looked as good as he could manage. Isn't that what, nearly all, do? Once in a blue moon we get a Bill Clinton whose political skills are so refined and intuition so deep that he does manage to achieve quite a lot. Clinton might've been able to do things a little better. But given the task before Obama, one doubts it.

A year later, I have re-edited this posting. Last year I had  wondered if Obama had lost his magic. But, subsequently, he has pick himself up to a very high level of performance indeed.  So that, the magic, in his case, has been re-gained.