[FOM] Goedel on Philosophy

[Andrew Boucher]

On  3 Mar 2007, at 5:42 PM, praatika at mappi.helsinki.fi wrote:

> Harvey Friedman <friedman at math.ohio-state.edu>:
>
>> Many Philosophers that I know do not believe in such a notion of
>> "progress" in philosophy.
>>
>> I am wondering what FOM subscribers think about this.
>
> I certainly think that there can be genuine progress in philosophy.
>
> Influential theories become refuted for good (e.g., all the key  
> theses of
> logical positivism),  apparent dichotomies are shown to be non- 
> exhaustive
> (e.g. radical scepticism vs strong foundationalism in  
> epistemology), false
> background assumptions become exposed, etc.
>

The examples seem primarily to be of the form:  philosophy advances  
thesis x; then philosophy refutes thesis x.  I guess this is progress  
of a sort - the same sort where one swats down flies which one has  
released oneself.