October 15, 2007
A Fashion Divide in Philosophy
Philosophers’ Playground posits that among the many rifts between continental and analytical philosophers is one of fashion.
“Walk into a meeting of the American Philosophical Association,” writes Steve Gimbel, of Gettysburg College, “and without saying a word to anyone, you could easily partition the crowd into continental and analytic classes by just looking at the clothes. (The third group of philosophers—Americanists—can also be easily spotted: They’re the ones in front of the hall with big, pleading eyes and signs that say, ‘Will talk about Dewey for food.’) Analytics and continentals dress differently … and that’s putting it nicely. Continentals dress themselves to the nines, whereas it is hard to find nine analytics who can dress themselves. So, being a science-worshipping logic techno-geek, I started to think about what accounted for this difference … and I believe I have an answer:
“The nature of fashion is predicated upon the satisfaction of the ‘goes with’ relation, G. An outfit meets the conditions of fashion acceptability only if it is comprised of a bottom covering, b, and a top covering, t, such that it is true that Gtb.
“While the satisfaction of the ‘goes with’ relation for top and bottom coverings is a necessary condition for an outfit to be categorized as ‘sharp,’ it is not sufficient for sharpness, as the if-clause requires accessorization.
“Initially it was thought that accessories would require the ‘goes with’ relation to be expanded from a binary to an arbitrary n-ary relation, but it was shown possible to group accessorization constants into a single variable which have been determined to satisfy the relation themselves. That is, one can show that shoes and a belt go together independent of the outfit, and that if a given bottom covering, say a particular pair of pants P, and given top covering, say a given shirt S, have been demonstrated to go together, that is for which GPS has already been demonstrated, then for a pair of shoes, h, to be fashion acceptable they must satisfy the ‘goes with’ relation G(PS)h. Such iterations must be repeated until a complete outfit has been assembled.
“The reason why analytic philosophers (and similarly mathematicians and cognitive scientists) have a difficult time dressing themselves or dress poorly is that the satisfaction of any sentence involving the ‘goes with’ relation is not finitely decidable. There is no algorithm by which one can in a finite amount of time, much less in the morning before you are too late for class, decide with deductive certainty whether an outfit is sharp and properly accessorized.”
Well, the great conversation probably makes up for the dowdy outfits, right?
Alex Kafka | Posted on Monday October 15, 2007 | PermalinkComments
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— marci Oct 17, 04:39 PM #