----- Original Message -----
From: "Brent Meeker" <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
To: <avoid-l.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: ' possible' reply to Bruno Marchal
> On 20-Aug-02, terrysavage wrote:
> > In an earlier note, (Re:Impossibilities,08/02/2002, 9:26)
> > I made some dismissive comments about the terms
> > 'possibility' and 'necessity'. For reasons I don't quite
> > understand, these were forwarded to Bruno Marchal. Bruno,
> > in turn, responded with views of his own, (via, Lennart
> > Nilsson, Fw:Am I a Token or a Type, 08/06/2002, 8:07) and
> > suggested (politely) that I was behind the times in the
> > study of Modal Logic. He was right.
> ...
> > One final comment on Bruno's remarks. He says, ...when
> > terms are confused and ambiguous, it is a motivation for
> > axiomatizing them....If not, *new* sciences just cannot
> > appear!' I have two responses:
>
> > 1. I have no interest in *new* sciences; I will
> > leave that to Wolfram.
> > We have enough trouble with the sciences we
> > already have.
>
> > 2. There is a better alternative for terms that
> > are confused and
> > ambiguous - just throw them away.
>
> Terry, I agree with almost all that you wrote. I would add
> that logic, particularly formal or symbolic logic, is just
> like the rest of mathematics. You can write down axioms and
> prove theorems according to rules of inference - but
> whether the axioms are true and whether the rules of
> inference apply to anything but the symbols is an empirical
> question. Even the simplest elements of logic, such as
> "&", can't be substituted everywhere the word "and" appears
> and still make sense. "&" can be used to conjoin
> declarative sentences or propostions; but if you try to
> stick it into, "succotash is not corn and potatoes" you'll
> get nonsense like, "succotash is not corn or succotash is
> not potatoes." So as in your (2), if you're going to
> introduce technical terms and symbols you had better have
> unambiguous domains defined.
>
> However, in defense of Bruno, he uses [] as "provable" and
> <> as "consistent", which seem pretty well defined within a
> given axiomatic system. It is when he equates "provable"
> with "necessary in all possible worlds" that I think I hear
> a train.
>
> Brent Meeker
>
> Hence a Reality, yes. But not necessarily a physical
> reality. Here is the
> logical dependence:
> NUMBERS -> "MACHINE DREAMS" -> PHYSICAL -> HUMANS -> PHYSICS
> -> NUMBERS.
> --- Bruno Marchal
>
Received on Fri Aug 23 2002 - 09:46:25 PDT