CB: >>I happened to have had a personal intellectual history of studying paradoxes, going back to when I heard of Russell's paradox as a college freshman. This was before I studied dialectics , wherein paradoxical contradiction is central. So, I was interested in the focus on strange loops. By and large, I don't read for the writing style of the writer. I'm not much of a reacreational reader of books.<<
I hate to be too narrow-minded, but although these have big implications for axiomatics in mathematics (starting with 'infinite sets', right?), what do they say about reality outside human formulations of mathematics? I'm not a mathematician or logician or a philosopher of such, and the one thing I know is it is very hard to say anything in ordinary language that satisfies them. I don't mean pardoxical contradictions like we have been discussing, I mean the nifty paradoxes that made Frege depressed. But at any rate, when Hofstadter comes out with a new book that incorporates a bunch of stuff he put into co-authored papers, you can be sure he is going after a recreational reader--that's where the money is. I don't like recreational reading because it hurts my eyes. CJ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
