|||| 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 ...