1/8 From Belgium with Love

© Luc de Brabandere - ATDW

 Summer 2008, when it all
began

The Atlantic featured Wired claimed

“Is Google making us Stoopid?” “The End of Science”

© Luc de Brabandere - ATDW

 How we built the course

❑ Content ❑ Choices we did not make:

• 8 chapters • Western point of view

• Our values
Chapter 1 : From Belgium with Love
• Limited knowledge of the English language
Chapter 2 : Thinking is a game
Chapter 3 : Digital transformation ❑ Choices we made
Chapter 4 : “It’s only words”
• Descriptive (>< prescriptive )
Chapter 5 : Modes of thinking
• ‘Applied philosophy’
Chapter 6 : Be Logical !
• ‘Business-oriented’
Chapter 7 : Be Creative !
• Focus on definitions
Chapter 8 : Be Critical !
• Visual storytelling (Venn diagrams)
• Optimistic
• Completed by a book

• And a thesaurus

© Luc de Brabandere - ATDW

 Clarify Philosophy Guide

Descriptive: how the world is Prescriptive: how the world should be

Goal: correcting people’s thinking Goal: changing people’s lives

Facts, statistics Norms, judgments Values

What is essential? What is true? What is good? What is beautiful?

What is permanent? What is valid?
What is real? Individually Collectively

Ethics Political Aesthetics

philosophy

Theory of
Epistemology justice
Metaphysics
Philosophy
Ontology Formal of
Argumentation
logic science
Theology
Linguistics
4
We are
here © Luc de Brabandere - ATDW

Philosophy of Science
Branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions,
foundations, and implications of science
Epistemology
Branch of philosophy of science that studies the methods, the
objects and the discourse of science
• Should cancer research be public or private ?
• How far can we modify DNA ?
• Do robots have rights ?
• Can scientists use rhetoric to convince ?
• Do we need science ?
• Is there a limit to human knowledge ?
• Does deduction produce new information?
• “Is Google making us stoopid ?”
• What is it for evidence to confirm a scientific theory?
• How do we distinguish between good and bad inductions?
• Is culture innate to human beings ?
• Are scientific theories based on beliefs ?
• How do we shape scientific models and theories ?
© Luc de Brabandere - ATDW
 Definition

Human Statement of the meaning of a term whose action is to make it

Species definite, distinct or clear.

Essential Accidental
Bearded
Effect of Essence Criteria for a good definition:
the essence per se • Short and easy to remember

Genus • Clearer than the term to be defined

Specific
Proper • Focuses on the essential
Animal difference
Laughter Reasonable • Neutral and objective
” • Avoids circularity
• Does not include any negation
To name things poorly is to add to the misfortune of the • Not built on analogies or metaphors
world
• Not based on etymology

” Albert Camus

Extension - the feature of including object in a concept (genus,

species)
Intension – the feature of assigning attributes to a concept Methods
(difference, properties, accident)
1. Four causes of Aristotle
Ex. : Animal
Intension: organic being, with sensitivity, and will 2. Genus and specific difference (Tree of Porphyry: see illustration)
Extension: tiger, rabbit, ant, whale…
3. Family Resemblance (Wittgenstein)
The greater the intension, the lesser the extension, and vice 4. Primitive notion (concept defined through criteria, not through other
versa
concepts)
© Luc de Brabandere & Lina Benmehrez
 Thinking unfolds between the outside
world and ourselves

Within us In front of us

Induction

Deduction

“In a man’s struggle against the world, I bet on the world”

7
-Franz Kafka

© Luc de Brabandere - ATDW

 Some more quotes

“The concept of a dog does not bark!”

-Spinoza

“Equations do not explode!”

-Russell
“The map is not the territory!”
-Korzybski

“The menu is not the meal!”

-Watts

Nobody ever died in the crash of a

flight simulator!
You will never strike oil by drilling
through a map of Texas!

© Luc de Brabandere - ATDW

 On the shoulders of influencers

• Francis Bacon • Plato

• Thomas More • Aristotle

• Bertrand Russell • Baruch Spinoza

• René Descartes • Immanuel Kant

• Albert Camus • Daniel Kahneman

© Luc de Brabandere - ATDW

 Science

Body of knowledge that has acquired a degree of abstraction

as it begins to detach itself from its direct source and its
immediate purpose.

What science is not

Frontispiece to The Voyage of the Beagle, Robert Taylor Pritchett, first
Murray illustrated edition, 1890
• It is different from experimental know-how
• It is not knowledge built on conventions
• It cannot be obsessed with the result.
• It is not a collection of techniques

”
Science is the knowledge of the causes

”
Aristotle
Science vs knowledge
“Science” comes from Latin “scientia”, meaning “knowledge”, then taking
on the meaning of “episteme”. In the 16th century, any knowledge
precise enough to be expressed in syntagms.
Science as we know it today relies heavily on writing for clarity,
reproducibility, and transmission of knowledge and reasoning.
Science vs philosophy
Born at the same time with Thalès
© Luc de Brabandere & Lina Benmehrez Separated with Kant
 Philosophy
” • It has no specific domain: it can address anything
Philosophy is born from the spectacle of change
” hungry
Philosophers have sought to understand why our knowledge is
imperfect, why we are wrong and how we can preserve ourselves
from error: Aristotle, Kant, Frege, Russell, ...
© Luc de Brabandere & Lina Benmehrez
A non-scientific theoretical practice that
is subject to reasoning and experience and that
consists less in knowing than in thinking or questioning.
-André Comte Sponville
Criteria
• It is a practice that is exercised
• But it is a theoretical practice
• It is not a science
• It builds its own thought on reason and experience
• It seeks to reflect and question: the philosopher makes you
Philosophy is a memory of questioning and research
guided by the desire to make the world intelligible,
or at least by the desire to identify areas of
intelligibility in a world where truth seems always to
be in suspense.
Alfredo Gomez-Muller (1991)