ONT Re: the tao is coi
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JA = Jon Awbrey
JC = John Collier
JA: So far your description of what you believe about norms
is limited to stating that it is less limited than mine.
If my norms may serve as lower bounds then I am content
to have them inform others of yours in this wise, but I
am sure that those who are thus informed would be happy
to receive some information just a bit more informative.
JC: Read my paper with Micahel Stingl on evolutionary naturalism on my web page.
JC: So you block by my view by usage. That is to set up a straw man.
That is what I have claimed you have been doing all along.
On second reading I realize that I do not know what this means:
"So you block by my view by usage."
JA: I merely elaborate my own insights
so as to make my usage transparent.
I don't see your view yet, nor how
what I have writ here can block it.
I simply said that it was my story.
Who blocks you from relating yours?
JC: You. By seeing only the superficial straw man. In any case, I have
listed a large number of other authors who take similar views on
logic and mathematics. You have claimed to have read them, but
it seems to me, not very well, with feeling. There are others
who understand me perfectly well.
You must mean the kind of a feeling that feels itself empowered
to overwrite what is written. That is all that your arguments
from sentiment and from sympathy suggest to me. Strange as it
may seem, many copies of these books were printed, and many of
them formed the texts and the supplemental readings of my own
very first logic courses. Aside from dedicated proof-theorists
who admittedly don't care a wff about model theory, you are the
only person that I have ever run into who confused consistency
and satisfiability in this way.
JC: On Russell, one of the most astute criticisms that would seem to agree with your view
of him was presented by M.H.A. Newman "Mr. Russell's Causal Theory of Perception"
Mind 37 [1928], 137-148. The problem is that it does not apply to Russell's
metaphysics and epistemology, so he never replied to it. For a more recent
discussion of the significance of these issues, see a recent paper written by
W.F. Demopoulos and Michael Friedman, but I don't have the reference handy.
Check Phil. Abstracts, or write one of them. Michael is in HPS at Indiana,
and Bill is at U of Western Ontarion, Philosophy, wgdemo@julian.uwo.ca.
My discussion is in footnote 14 of “Critical Notice of Paul Thompson,
The Structure of Biological Theories”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22,
(1992): 285-296.
JC: Hilary Putnam, in "Models and Reality', Journal of Symbolic Logic 45 [1980], 464-482,
makes a similar argument that has been widely commented on. His objections apply to
certain views of mathematics and logic, but not all. There is an article of mine on
a similar argument of Putnam's on my web site: Could I Conceive Being a Brain in a Vat?,
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 68 (1990): 413-419.
Apparently some feeling of reading has moved you to read things that I haven't yet written.
I explained this at the beginning, but will make an effort to explain it more succinctly.
Despite the occasional pleasures of rhetorical rib-poking, my purpose is not to demonize
Aristotle, or Descartes, or Russell. I am viewing them merely as more or less visible
test particles in a cultural field, the dynamics of which I am trying to understand.
JC: A comment of mine, in the context of model theoretic approaches
to biological science: The problem is that abstract models can be
referred to only by description, but descriptions permit alternative
isomorphic interpretations as long as the interpretations have the same
cardinality. Distinguishing the interpretations requires attention to the
internal properties of the models. Inasmuch as we pick out actual situations
in the empirical world as candidates for isomorphism with an abstract model, on
the other hand, we must refer to them ostensively (in Russell's terms, we must know
them by acquaintance), so we cannot use their internal properties to pick them out,
on pain of circularity. Putnam's "solution" is to internalise everything, including
the empirical world. It is not clear from Putnam's writings exactly how this "solution"
is supposed to bridge the gap between description and ostention. -- footnote 14 of
“Critical Notice of Paul Thompson, The Structure of Biological Theories”,
Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22, (1992): 285-296.
I have explained that my approach, my all too impoverished approach,
will be to see whether clarity can be achieved from the poorer POV's
before trying to move on to richer perspectives. From what you have
said about prop calc, I will preserve my reservations about the rest.
JC: Putnam often takes himself to be following in Peirce's footsteps in this move.
JC: My solution, as I have mentioned, is to use concrete models to interpret
abstract ones, with ultimate access by ostention. This is consistent with
Russell's views, but I do not share his belief that only universals exist.
From what you said earlier on, I got the feeling that "abstract" and "concrete"
are just one more couple of words that we probably use with different meanings.
To me, concrete objects are things like elephants, functions, graphs, or signs.
At any rate, the whole point of a sign relational framework is to permit us to
talk about the relationship of logical language to objective objects, and I do
not see any examples of it having been done well without such clear constructs.
JC: Finally, It takes me sometimes more than a day to write responses to your postings,
Jon, and even then I feel I haven't had time to think them through properly. I am
truly astonished by the speed at which you post and give replies to what I think
are real problems for you. I simply cannot keep up.
Most of this is stuff that I worked out 10 or 20 or 30 years ago.
The barriers to writing it out are more of memory than invention.
I am hoping that when some of this sawdust has settled that I'll
still have a chance to let you in on what I've been up to lately.
Jon Awbrey
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