John, That first bit - on *ontological misogyny*, etc. - is fascinating and clever! As a skewering of Quine et al, it seems to work well.
However, for the purposes of this discussion, it might be a bit of a bait and switch. Let us assume our antagonist is a misogynist, and that he will set it upon himself to try to write women into a second-class status, no matter his starting point. Under such conditions, he may abuse the nominalist premises in exactly the ways so indicated. However, presumably he could abuse realist premises to serve the same argument, with similar effort. Women are, after all, as a "general" rule smaller than men, have poorer spatial orientation than men in landscape-sized tests, etc., etc. In both cases - constrained by either nominalist or realist logic - one could easily make similar arguments in service of misandry. Even when it comes down to nuts and bolts, I'm still confused about the critique of Quine & Co. Let it be that John has the idea that 'propositions" exist. Let it also be that Quine has the idea that "propositions" don't exist, but "sentences" exist, and sentences work in - exactly and completely, without remainder - all the ways that John thinks propositions work. In that case, doesn't Peirce come along, smack you both on the head, and point out that no matter how you want to phrase the terminology, you both have the same idea? ----------- Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. Supervisory Survey Statistician U.S. Marine Corps <[email protected]> On Sun, Jan 29, 2017 at 12:39 PM, John F Sowa <[email protected]> wrote: > Eric and list, > > EC > >> My initial inclination is to say that everything you pointed to does >> seem important, but doesn't seem obviously to hinge on anything I can >> easily understand as a difference between nominalists and realists >> > > The simplest explanation I have ever read was by Alonzo Church -- > in a lecture to Quine's logic group at Harvard: > > http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/church.htm > The Ontological Status of Women and Abstract Entities > > This excerpt from Church’s 1958 lecture was preserved by Tyler Burge. > Cathy Legg posted it to her web site, from which I downloaded it. > (I really wish we had a YouTube of that lecture and the debates > between Church and Quine.) > > In my web page, I added URLs for a 1947 paper by Goodman and Quine > and a response by Church in 1951. > > For anyone who wants to see an important *practical* difference > between nominalism and realism, see the following excerpt from > Church's book, _The Calculi of Lambda Conversion_: > http://www.jfsowa.com/logic/alonzo.htm > > Nominalists like Quine deny the distinction between essence and > accident in philosophy. In mathematics and computer science, they > extend their ideology to deny the distinction between intensions > and extensions. > > For a nominalist, a function or relation *is* a set of n-tuples. > For a realist, the _intension_ of a function or relation is a rule, > law, principle, or axiom. The _extension_ is the set of tuples > determined by that rule, law, principle, or axiom. > > Peirce would add *habit* to that list. A habit is an informal law > that could be made formal -- but only at the expense of losing its > flexibility (AKA vagueness). Peirce said that vagueness is essential > for mathematical discovery. George Polya did not cite Peirce in > his books, but he made that point very clear. > > Carnap was a nominalist who denied the reality of all value > judgments, including Truth. After talking with Tarski, he accepted > the notion of truth because it could be defined in terms of sets. > That led Carnap (1947) to define modal logic in terms of a set of > undefined things called possible worlds. > > Other nominalists, such as Kripke and Montague adopted Carnap's > method, but I believe that Michael Dunn's definition in terms > of laws (related to methods by Aristotle, Peirce, and Hintikka) > is more fundamental: http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/5qelogic.pdf > > Quine & Co. also deny the existence of propositions. They insist > on talking only about sentences. For a definition of proposition > that was inspired by Peirce, but stated in a way that a nominalist > could accept, see http://www.jfsowa.com/logic/proposit.pdf > > This article is a 5-page excerpt from a longer article that discusses > the philosophical issues: http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/worlds.pdf > > John > > > ----------------------------- > PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON > PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to > [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L > but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the > BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm > . > > > > > >
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