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Is Stephen Hawking's claim that philosophy is dead suspiciously philosophical

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How was Hawking philosophical? Is this [http://www.mesacc.edu/~yount/text/objs2hawking.pdf] your basis for that claim, Noah?

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Originally Posted by Samuela M.T. Clemens:
How was Hawking philosophical? Is this [http://www.mesacc.edu/~yount/text/objs2hawking.pdf] your basis for that claim, Noah?

My basis for that claim is just simply the statement "philosophy is dead."  

Of course, it seems like a great deal of what hawkings is referring to is specifically the branch of philosophy known as 'metaphysics,'  because he doesn't necessarily see physics as being natural philosophy (even though that's what Netwon considered himself to be a practitioner of.)  

In order for philosophy to be considered 'dead,' that would involve defining its nature and scope, and evaluating its purpose within human culture.  So even for him to use logical reasoning to come up with the conclusion that it is pointless, in so doing I would describe that as a practice in philosophy.

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Originally Posted by Noah Harvey:
Is Stephen Hawking's claim that philosophy is dead suspiciously philosophical

it does sound as if what hes saying is philosophical to me

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Originally Posted by Michael Okel:

Originally Posted by Noah Harvey:
Is Stephen Hawking's claim that philosophy is dead suspiciously philosophical

it does sound as if what hes saying is philosophical to me

I see string theory as mistake compounded on top of mistakes;  I suspect that Einstein was right in doubting certain aspects of relativity theory and the rest of the scientific community was too star struck to take his self criticism seriously.  

So I see hawkings as barking up the wrong tree, and as such am not interested in investigating his work too thoroughly.

But from what little of it I read, when he dismisses philosophy it seems to me that he is most specifically attacking metaphysics, while failing to acknowledge that there is a metaphysical bedrock ontop of which scientific theory is grounded.

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Scientists, even famous ones, are notoriously inept as philosophers.  No reason it should be otherwise since they're very different disciplines, but it apparently doesn't occur to scientists that they're untrained in philosophy and therefore don't know what they're talking about.  For that reason alone i wouldn't take anything Hawking has to say about philosophy seriously.

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Dale,Id imagine that there is a considerable overlap between 'scientists' and 'philosophers' but at the same time can see how science, with its intense specialization, may have a tendency to neglect big picture thinking.

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Originally Posted by Noah Harvey:
Dale,Id imagine that there is a considerable overlap between 'scientists' and 'philosophers' but at the same time can see how science, with its intense specialization, may have a tendency to neglect big picture thinking.

science almost CANT see the big picture, its funny how even scientists who are studying the quantum are still thinking in newtonian terms, still living as if they were in newtonian times