Re: SUO: Mutual Admiration Society
On Sun, Apr 07, 2002 at 12:10:06PM -0500, Bill Andersen wrote:
>
> > [Sowa]
> > I agree. That notation, with some minor modifications by Peano,
> > was Peirce's first method for representing all of first-order
> > logic. He later discovered a far better system, which he called
> > his "chef d'oeuvre", and which I have been teaching and preaching
> > to students for over 20 years.
> >
> > Whenever I show people Peirce's EGs, they ask "Why didn't they teach
> > us logic this way in college?" And I have to answer that their poor
> > benighted teachers had never read the literature of their own specialty.
> > There is an enormous gulf of ignorance out there, and somehow, one has
> > to bring people from where they are to a higher plane of consciousness.
> > But all teaching of any kind must start at the point, for better or
> > worse, where the students happen to be.
>
> Folks,
>
> A couple of comments:
>
> JA, you are simply mistaken if you think that syntax has any impact on the
> ability of ATP systems to solve problems. I can't think of any real ATP
> system that pays any attention to the input syntax once the parse of the
> problem set is done with.
>
> JS, you can't claim to be doing the right thing with CL on one hand and then
> turn around and somehow EGS are a "better" system in any but a pedagogical
> sense. You have told me in person several times that they are just an
> alternative syntax for FOL, so it can't be "better" in any way that counts
> for ATP.
Even "pedagogically," there seems to have been no special difficulty for
people to handle Frege-Peano-Hilbert's "far worse" systems: consider the
development of logic between 1879 and 1936 (the year without which the
term 'computer science' would be non-denoting), and the decades since. A
lot of people on several continents seem to have had no trouble learning
what they wanted to learn.
--
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Pierluigi Miraglia Cycorp, Inc.
Ontological Engineer 3721 Executive Center Dr.
(512) 514-2988 Austin, TX 78731