Brent wrote: "...But if one can reconstruct "the rest of the world" from these simpler domains, so much the better that they are simple...."
Paraphrased (facetiously): you have a painting of a landscape with mountains, river, people, animals, sky and plants. Call that 'the totality' and *select the animals as your model* (disregarding the rest) even you continue by Occam - reject the non-4-legged ones, to make it (even) simpler. ((All you have is some beasts in a frame)) Now try to *"reconstruct"* the 'rest of the total' ONLY from those remnant 'model-elements' dreaming up (?) mountains, sunshine, river etc. *from nowhere*, not even from your nonexisting fantasy, or even(2!) as you say: from the *Occam-simple*, i.e. as you say: from those few 4-legged animals, - to make it even simpler. Good luck. You must be a 'creator', or a 'cheater', having at least seen the *total *to do so. You cannot *build up* unknown complexity from its simple parts - you are restricted to the (reduced?) inventory you have - in a synthesis, (while in the analysis you can restrict yourself to a choice of it. ) John On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 3:19 PM, Brent Meeker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > > John Mikes wrote: > > Isn't logical inconsistency = insanity? (Depends how we formulate the > > state of being "sane".) > > As Bertrand Russell pointed out, if you are perfectly consistent you are > either > 100% right or 100% wrong. Human fallibility being what it is, don't bet on > being 100% right. :-) > > In classical logic, an inconsistency allows you to prove every propositon. > In a > para-consistent logic the rules of inference are changed (e.g. by restoring > the > excluded middle) so that an inconsistency doesn't allow you to prove > everything. > > Graham Priest has written a couple of interesting books arguing that all > logic > beyond the narrow mathematical domain leads to inconsistencies and so we > need to > have ways to deal with them. > > > Simplicity in my vocabulary of the 'totality-view' means mainly to "cut" > > our model of observation narrower and narrower to eliminate more and > > more from the "rest of the world" (which only would complicate things) > > from our chosen topic of the actual interest in our observational field > > (our topical model). > > Occam's razor is a classic in such simplification. > > And so is mathematical logic and arithmetic. But if one can reconstruct > "the > rest of the world" from these simpler domains, so much the better that they > are > simple. > > Brent Meeker > > > John M > > > > On 8/18/08, *Bruno Marchal* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > > > > > > > On 18 Aug 2008, at 03:45, Brent Meeker wrote: > > > > > Sorry. I quite agree with you. I regard logic and mathematics > > as our > > > inventions - not restrictions on the world, but restrictions we > > > place on how we > > > think and talk about the world. We can change them as in para- > > > consistent logics. > > > > > > > > > > I think it depends of the domain of inquiry or application. > > Para-consistent logic can be interesting for the laws and in natural > > language mind processing, but hardly in elementary computer science > or > > number theory. > > > > Then recall that any universal machine, enough good in the art of > > remaining correct during introspection, discovers eventually at least > > 8 non classical logics (the arithmetical hypostases) most of them > > being near "paraconsistency" (by Godel's consistency of > inconsistency) > > making the most sane machine always very near insanity. > > And so easily falling down. > > > > > > > > Bruno > > > > > > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/<http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
