RE: virus: maxims and ground rules

Richard Brodie (richard@brodietech.com)
Tue, 11 May 1999 06:40:23 -0700

Statements made in and about symbolic logic may give us insight into operating in reality, but ultimately do not yield any truth about reality. Saying that A, or A=A, are obvious and unarguable axioms attempts to finesse the philosophical question about whether parts of reality have intrinsic names and boundaries. Much power and elucidation can be gained by taking the position that they do not.

I hope this answers your question and I apologize if the brevity of my prior comment was received as a slap.

Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com
Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme" Free newsletter! http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-virus@lucifer.com [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com]On Behalf Of TheHermit
Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 11:08 PM
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: RE: virus: maxims and ground rules

There are sooo very many of them Richard... Please narrow it down a bit.

Remember, I am not a Randist.

I excluded the "omission of measurement", through stipulation of "the same" or "absolute equivalence (for whatever purpose)" (in otherwords, for the application where "A=A" is relevant - no excluded middle) and "errors through application" by reporting only a truth about the operator, stipulating the relationship of A to A. In other words, my context was to do with the nature of the equivalence ("=") operator. And my question was "How can this statement about the nature of an operator, become a supposition, when removed from the given frame of reference?"

Is it implied that somehow "=" becomes a conditional conjunction? In which case please reflect this in a suitable logic, because I don't get it.

Stating that I have produced "the objectivist fallacy"*, simply because I used a phrase that the Randists appropriated from logic without understanding the limitations of its application, smacks of special pleading at best.

TheHermit <Not fighting, but puzzled>

*The use of the definite article to describe something I had never noticed being used that way before, made me think I was joining the "Color me stupid" group. So I did a search on AltaVista for "Objectivist fallacy" which turned up exactly one URL - and that one did not define it. While "objectivist fallacy" turned up 6 hits, some with broken links, it did yield, "We have been educated, not in the requirements of contextual relevance, but in what is coming to be called the "objectivist fallacy" in language. We are encouraged to see things objectively, neglecting context. This objectivist view implies the law of excluded middle, by which objects, attributes, and categories are two-valued, bivalent, black-or-white. (They and their attributes either exist or do not exist, are either true or false but not both, not fuzzy.) This contradicts our natural experience; yet objectivist assumptions underlie most educational models of information use, and all tabular-form data structures. The problem is not simply theoretical."

As I dealt carefully with value, placed the "True" statement in context, and queried only how removing it from context could convert it into a supposition, I don't suppose that this is "the" objective fallacy you were thinking of? So which one was it?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-virus@lucifer.com
> [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com]On Behalf
> Of Richard Brodie
> Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 11:26 PM
> To: virus@lucifer.com
> Subject: RE: virus: maxims and ground rules
>
>
> You are making the Objectivist fallacy, Carl.
>
> Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com
> Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme"
> Free newsletter! http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-virus@lucifer.com
> [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com]On Behalf
> Of TheHermit
> Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 8:08 PM
> To: virus@lucifer.com
> Subject: RE: virus: maxims and ground rules
>
>
> [1] A
> [2] A=A
>
> [1] States that an entity which can be represented by A
> exists. In the above
> tautology [2], the entity symbolized by 'A' on the left is
> the same entity
> or an absolutely equivalent entity (for whatever purpose)
> represented by 'A'
> on the right. The operator placed between them is that of
> equivalence. This
> is a true "referenceless" statement of truth about the nature of the
> equivalence operator. You may argue that it has as referent,
> the context of
> symbolic logic, yet the "referenceless" statement of truth,
> that "A=A", does
> not become a supposition when removed from the "frame of reference"
> described above. It becomes meaningless, or takes on some
> other meaning -
> e.g. it could represent a polar bond between two molecules.
> So unless you
> wish to redefine English at the same time as we redefine
> everything else,
> your statement requires revision or rephrasing.
>
> TheHermit
> PS Prof. Tim, how did I guess you would?
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-virus@lucifer.com
> > [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com]On Behalf
> > Of psypher
> > Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 8:53 PM
> > To: virus@lucifer.com
> > Subject: Re: virus: maxims and ground rules
> >
> >
> >
> > ...anybody else have any comments on this one?
> >
> > >> All statements of truth are embedded a particular frame of
> > > reference from which they cannot be separated without becoming
> > > suppositions.
> > >
> > > Ooo! I like that!
> > >
> > > -Prof. Tim
> >
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