SUO: Re: Critique Of Non-Functional Reason
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| A. Automated Reasoning (AR)
|
| The standard will be suitable for automated logical inference
| to support knowledge-based reasoning applications.
|
| B. Inter-Operability (IO)
|
| The standard will provide a basis for achieving Inter-Operability
| among various software and database applications.
[AB]
I have presented my thesis and my inquiry:
| Thesis. Mathematics and its applications in physics
| and the other special sciences are serving moderately
| successfully to describe the world as we know it today,
| while logic lags behind in a largely ineffectual state.
|
| Inquiry. Why is this?
I have sketched the outlines of a diagnosis,
a syndrome suggestive of retinal detachment,
affecting the stereoscopy of data and logic.
Still ...
The diagnosis of a severe disorder can hardly be useful,
much less welcome, if it is delivered in the absence of
some orderly array of differential indications, issuing
in the prescription of measures to be taken toward the
remedy of the presenting and the underlying conditions.
So it falls on us to ask ourselves the critical question:
What is the rest of science doing so right that logic is
still stubbornly doing so wrong? For all of the various
other sciences, in the main and in the mean, have passed
through their crises, several and severe, the distempers
of infancy, childhood, adolescence, if not yet maturity,
and they've done so in times not so remote on the scale
of intellectual history to be yet lost to our cultural
memories. They have taken their medicine, and learned
not a few hard lessons from the experience, but logic
lingers on with no show of improvement, sick with its
hangovers from times that we but wish were immemorial.
Well, I've been following a clue all along to what I think might just
be the Rx of choice, a recipe that I've kept in my mind in plain view,
all this time in my present subject line -- if logic is non-functional,
then let's make it functional. And how to do that I will now describe.
I redraw my sketch of the immediate situation,
an icon of the dis-integration that currently
exists between the empirical and the rational
views of the universe, and this time I dab in
a few patches of color from the palette of data
that I gathered in my travels from Omaha to Perth.
I return to the statement:
| s = "If Perth is 400 miles from Omaha then Perth is in America".
I parse it, at first sight, in the following fashion:
| u = "Perth is 400 miles from Omaha",
|
| v = "Perth is in America",
|
| s = ( u ( v )) = not u without v,
|
| s = ( Perth is 400 miles from Omaha ( Perth is in America )).
You have noticed, of course, that I have already forgotten all of
Quine's fine distinctions, which I always do just about two days
after I try to memo-ize them. I will have to justify it, later.
So here is my picture of the dataset YMMV : {Omaha} -> {Perth} --
| o-----------------------------------------------------------o
| | X |
| | o---------------o o---------------o |
| | / \ / * * * * * \ * * |
| | / . * * * * * \ |
| | / / \ * * * * * \ * * |
| | / / \ * * * * * \ |
| | / / \ * * * * * \ * * |
| | o o o * * * * * o |
| | | | | * * * * * | * * |
| | | | | * * * * * | |
| | | U | * | V | * * |
| | | | | * * * * * | |
| | | | | * * * * * | * * |
| | o o o * * * * * o |
| | \ \ / * * * * * / * * |
| | \ \ / * * * * * / |
| | \ \ / * * * * * / * * |
| | \ . * * * * * / |
| | \ / \ * * * * * / * * |
| | o---------------o o---------------o |
| | 99 = 1 + 80 + 18 |
| o-----------------------------------------------------------o
|
| DE IN KS MN MS ND NV NY VA NB ON
| o-----------------------------------------------------------o
| | |
| | - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - - - - |
| AL | 839 563 892 1203 411 1619 2356 1112 515 1577 1202 |
| | |
| | - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - - - - |
| AR | 1143 457 337 654 439 1052 1747 1266 1029 1757 1250 |
| | |
| | - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - - - - |
| GA | 892 670 976 1310 415 1726 2463 1165 569 1635 1260 |
| | |
| | - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - - - - |
| IL | 823 176 622 758 540 1174 1904 950 665 1452 945 |
| | |
| | - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - - - - |
| KY | 577 389 958 960 744 1376 2240 825 315 1298 891 |
| | |
| | - + + + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - - - - |
| MO | 1069 400 403 379 797 844 1595 1134 1012 1542 1035 |
| | |
| | - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - - - - |
| NE | 1201 598 348 425 893 642 1380 1242 1195 1672 1166 |
| | |
| | - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - - - - |
| TX | 1317 724 393 925 338 1323 1909 1499 1055 2083 1511 |
| | |
| | - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - - - - |
| VA | 526 425 994 996 735 1411 2276 774 264 1264 881 |
| | |
| o-----------------------------------------------------------o
Lotsa bustle to hustle through this weekend ---
I will try to explain the details next week ...
Jon Awbrey
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