Dear Jochen,
Thank you very much for your very insightful comment!
I am happy you seemed to have enjoyed our essay.
Just to follow up on some of your comments:
- I must say that I was unaware of Solomonoff's induction programme. Thank you very much for mentioning it that will be a valuable thing to look into.
- Yes, as you say, as far as we describe it in the essay there is no end to the process of generating daughter questions from philosophical ones. Although we did not have the space to go further, it is often the case as well that philosophical questions can emerge from specific set of principles which were used to transform another philosophical question into a scientific one.
- With regards to questions like "Why is there something rather than nothing?" whose substance could essentially be lost by being substituted with scientific ones, I totally agree that this could happen and, in fact, wonder if this has not happened may times in the past and we are simply oblivious to it now. For example, the very deep questioning of Parmenides and Zeno on change have been replaced, in my opinion, by empty mathematical questions on the convergence of geometric series (answers to these questions are obviously mathematically rich but by stripping off all the philosophical content, it is difficult to evaluate how such mathematical answers do actually provide closure to the initial philosophical questions). That is the reason why, as you say, historians, scientists and philosophers alike should keep track of these things. Ernst Mach in fact was already calling upon the apparent arrogance of his contemporaries in the first pages of his critics of mechanics.
- I look forward to reading your essay and commenting on it in the corresponding thread.
- With regards to consciousness, I will have a look at your paper and possibly continue the discussion here or elsewhere :) .
Many thanks.
Fabien