Sunday Reading

There is an article in The New York TImes about a "new" philosophy. Though I don't see how this is any kind of new philosophy. Maybe someone knows better than I, but this seems like it would fall under some kind of philosophy of science and technology. And then there is the thought experiment that the article brings up: Kripke offered a thought experiment: Suppose, he asked us to imagine, that Gödel’s theorem was actually the work of a fellow named Schmidt; it’s just that Gödel somehow got hold of the manuscript and thereafter was wrongly credited with its authorship. When those of us who know about “Gödel” only as the theorem’s author invoke that name, whom are we referring to? According to Russell’s view of reference, we’re actually referring to Schmidt: “Gödel” is merely shorthand for the fellow who devised the famous theorem, and Schmidt is the creature who answers to that description. “But it seems to me that we are not,” Kripke declared. “We simply are not.” To which experimentalists reply: What do you mean “we,” kemo sabe? Recently, a team of philosophers led by Machery came up with situations that had the same form as Kripke’s and presented them to two groups of undergraduates — one in New Jersey and another in Hong Kong. The Americans, it turned out, were significantly more likely to give the responses that Kripke took to be obvious; the Chinese students had intuitions that were consonant with the older theory of reference. Maybe this relates to the supposed individualism of Westerners; maybe their concern that we get Schmidt’s name right isn’t shared by the supposedly more group-minded East Asians. Whatever the explanation, it’s a discomforting result. “We simply are not”: well, that may be so at Princeton or Rutgers. On the other side of the planet, it might seem we are. What should philosophers make of that? My problem with this question is that what we are really refering to in this example is not Godel or Schmidt but the actual theorem. Words are, after all, just empty signifiers, so what we call the theorem (the words we use to "name" the theorem) matters very little. It doesn't matter if we call it Schmidtz or Godel. Did I miss something? Also, why do philosophers have to justify what they do now? I am not saying that mixing genres here is bad. I have been wondering why philosophy isn't used by more professions, but as soon as something is a little too hard, no one wants to put in the time and effort to understand it and use it. What I am asking is why are these people using outdated philosophical concepts. Philosophy is behind our laws and religion, and is involved in psychology, literature, art, language etc. We should be embracing it more and using it more in our daily life.