The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy

[BaalChatzaf]

To say that some of the rules of one's moral code can be dispensed with in emergencies is a feature of any sensible moral code.

What is an "emergency". Is it not possible to declare an "emergency" in such a way as one may do what he pleases to do?

In effect you are saying morality applies everywhere except where it does not apply.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Guyau]

Greg, this note pertains to your #148. Thank you for that one and for all the other remarks you have made in this thread.

I certainly agree that there are facts about possibilities that are more wide-ranging than facts about the actual. So just as Leibniz would say that truth is correspondence to reality actual or possible, we rightly say that facts are the truthmakers of both physical truths and mathematical truths. The possible includes the actual, of course, but just as the posssible outruns the actual, mathematics outruns physics.

So far, I continue to think there is a principled difference in the character of the truths of the formal disciplines of pure logic and pure mathematics (including set theory and category theory), on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the character of the truths of science and ordinary perceptual experience. The evidence we adduce to establish the truth of the four-color-map theorem is systematically of a different kind from the evidence we adduce to solve the problem of "missing" solar neutrinos. Facts are being creatively established in both cases. Already-established mathematics is relied on in both cases, and new physics is forever one of the sources of suggestion for new directions of mathematical development. Nonetheless, the systematic differences of method we have evolved for these disciplines remains. I still expect that a correct articulation of those differences can yield a valid distinction among truths, a distinction sharing aspects of past versions of the synthetic-analytic distinction.

I should perhaps mention for you Greg that my philosophy of mathematics is structuralist, and empiricist in the broad sense of Kitcher. Eventually, I hope to deliver the further work (paper publication) on the synthetic-analytic issue anticipated as part of my "With-Measurement Program" described at the site RoR: http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Boydst...t_Program.shtml

Edited June 2, 2007 by Stephen Boydstun

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

So: If there is something specific you would like to criticise in the logic of what I am saying...

Daniel,

(sigh)

I am not interested in criticizing. I want to understand. That is where I come from.

You might notice that I use the CDROM to show where you have made an inaccurate statement by giving quotes to the contrary. (That is not as criticism, either. It is usually to correct an inaccuracy.) If you think that it overuse, well so be it. Call it my quirk.

Anyway, I do have a starting question about a subject that is very nebulous in your writing. (I don't mean that as a criticism. I mean it exactly. It is not clear.)

What is your view of the nature of concepts?

After that, there are some related questions. Do you think concepts even exist? Are they important if they do? Do they underpin logic or is logic based on something else? Are concepts a form of knowledge? If not, what is non-conceptual knowledge? Do you agree that words and concepts are different? If so, how?

All of your explanations about tautology, definitions leading to infinite regress, etc., do not really deal with any of these questions. If I were to criticize, the criticism would be evasion of these issues, but I am not convinced that this is on purpose. Yet the truth is that these issues are almost always ignored in your writing when I bring them up.

If there are too many questions, just the first one is specific and will do for now: What is your view of the nature of concepts?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

What is an "emergency". Is it not possible to declare an "emergency" in such a way as one may do what he pleases to do?

In effect you are saying morality applies everywhere except where it does not apply.

Bob,

What is wrong with that? Life is conditional. Since when is life unconditional? Let's put it in different words.

Morality is a code of behavior to obtain and/or preserve values. Objectivist morality focuses on rational values.

Thus, a code of behavior to obtain and/or preserve rational values applies only to situations where rational values are possible. An emergency is a situation where rational values are no longer possible.

To use an example from you, if a comet slammed into the earth, morality would not do a damn bit of good. That would be an emergency.

Now take that on down to smaller emergencies. The principle stays the same. Of course the key term in determining if a situation is an emergency is "rational" or "objective," not "what one pleases to do."

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This is analogous to selecting the rules for a game fairly. For example, consider pool: there are many different games of pool we could play. We have a choice of games, a choice of rules. None of these rules is unfair; we have no obligation to choose or reject any of them. However, once we agree to choice one of these games, one of these sets of rules, we have a moral obligation to play by them, and any breaking of such a rule is unfair.

Greg,

I only have one problem with the game idea for logic: purpose. This must be kept in mind when making rules if any meaningful activity is to follow.

With pool, if the purpose is not to make a competitive game where the only determining factors of the outcome are chance applied equally to the contestants and their skill, we could make rules saying that a person could pick a ball up and put it in a hole anytime he wanted to, or that he could sit on the pool table while the other was taking a shot, or that he could put as many balls on the table as he wishes at any moment, etc. If the purpose is as I stated, a competitive game, there is one factor that cannot be breached in the rules: reality (causality), and this applies without exception to his purpose.

The same goes for logic. We can have a set of rules, but we have to base them on reality if we want to use logic for obtaining knowledge (the purpose). For instance, we cannot have a word mean one thing one time, then mean something unrelated at another in the same formulation. We can do that if we want to play word games. But we cannot if we want to obtain knowledge.

I would say that the purpose determines the fundamental nature of the rules.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

To say that some of the rules of one's moral code can be dispensed with in emergencies is a feature of any sensible moral code.

What is an "emergency". Is it not possible to declare an "emergency" in such a way as one may do what he pleases to do?

In effect you are saying morality applies everywhere except where it does not apply.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Sure, everybody says that. Do you have a better formulation?

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

Sure, everybody says that. Do you have a better formulation?

--Brant

The only thing lacking is a definition of "emergency" that everyone would agree with.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The only thing lacking is a definition of "emergency" that everyone would agree with.

Bob,

This is a little short on genus and differentia, but how about when all hell breaks loose?

Michael

[Dragonfly]

One man's hell is another man's heaven.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Personally, I don't distinguish 'emergencies' from routine life. I think Miss Rand was wrongly influenced by rule utilitarianism or canon law as widely-understood systems precedent. So that Roark says to the Dean that he has rules guiding his work as an aspiring architect. Roark's rules are revolutionary only in the sense that he disowned tradition and trade practice. Galt's laundry list of virtues read like 10 Commandments. It is not helpful to claim that such rules can be suspended in an emergency.

Freshman surveys of philosophy pose the dilemma of Nazis knocking at the door, asking if you have any Jews in the attic. Should we always tell the truth? Rand's virtues of integrity, justice, productivity, etc have similar defects and context rigidities. Rand was always on solid ground in abstract moral principle: evil requires the sanction of the victim, for instance. But her ethics fell apart when she had to endorse or damn political figures like Ronald Reagan. Who can honestly recommend an actor to lead anything?

None of this has anything to do with the Analytic-Synthetic debate. Maybe it's an emegency digression.

W.

[BaalChatzaf]

The only thing lacking is a definition of "emergency" that everyone would agree with.

Bob,

This is a little short on genus and differentia, but how about when all hell breaks loose?

Michael

Depending on the hell that is breaking loose, even some hell breaking loose can constitute an emergency.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Wolf DeVoon]

All hell, some hell, a little hell = subjectivism

[Brant Gaede]

All hell, some hell, a little hell = subjectivism

An "emergency" is when you are outside of society--society, i.e., the law, is not represented in the social situation. You still have your "rights" philosophically, but not practically. Force and guile rule. Force secures rights legally through government, which may use guile too. Government is always dealing with emergencies, big and small. Governments, practically, have no rights, just the citizens.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

An "emergency" is when you are outside of society--society, i.e., the law, is not represented in the social situation. You still have your "rights" philosophically, but not practically. Force and guile rule. Force secures rights legally through government, which may use guile too. Government is always dealing with emergencies, big and small. Governments, practically, have no rights, just the citizens.

I've argued in previous writing that government is illusory and impotent. Nor do I think government is adept at dealing with emergencies, although government habitually creates disasters. If force and guile rule outside the law, how is this better when government rules by force and guile? And worse: I think you said an emergency is when society is not represented in a social situation, which sounds like gibberish.

I don't mean to offend. Like Margaret Thatcher said: There is no such thing as society.

W.

Edited June 3, 2007 by Wolf DeVoon

[Wolf DeVoon]

Just had to add this, on 'emergencies'

----------------

New York Times, June 2, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is writing a new plan to maintain governmental control in the wake of an apocalyptic terrorist attack or overwhelming natural disaster, moving such doomsday planning for the first time from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to officials inside the White House...

Bush quietly signed the new policy on May 4... [as a] "homeland security-national security presidential directive" -- a special kind of executive order that can be kept secret...

The unexpected arrival of the new policy has received little attention in the mainstream media, but it has prompted discussion among legal specialists, homeland security experts and Internet commentators -- including concerns that the policy may be written in such a way that makes it too easy to invoke emergency presidential powers such as martial law...

The public portion of the new "National Continuity Policy" contains few details about how surviving officials would invoke emergency powers, or when emergency powers should be deemed to be no longer necessary so that the elected democracy can resume. The answers to such questions may be contained in a classified appendix which has not been made public...

The unanswered questions have provoked anxiety across ideological lines. The conservative commentator Jerome Corsi , for example, wrote in a much-linked online column that the directive looked like a recipe for allowing the office of the presidency to seize "dictatorial powers" because the policy does not discuss consulting Congress about when to invoke emergency powers -- or when to turn them off...

The policy also does not contain a direct reference to statutes in which Congress has imposed checks and balances on the president's power to impose martial law or other extraordinary measures.

For example, the policy does not explicitly acknowledge the National Emergencies Act, a post-Watergate law that gives Congress the right to override the president's determination that a national emergency still exists, activating the president's emergency powers.

The policy says that it "shall be implemented consistent with applicable law," but it does not say which laws are "applicable." Because the Bush legal team has pushed a controversial theory that the Constitution gives the president an unwritten power to disobey laws at his own discretion to protect national security, some specialists said that the vagueness of the policy is troubling.

Edited June 3, 2007 by Wolf DeVoon

[Gregory Browne]

Anyway, my point is that even if all of the meanings of all of the terms in sentence are products of linguistic convention (and, in a way, this is always true), it does not follow that the sentence itself is merely a product of linguistic convention, "a truth by convention" (rather than "a truth of fact"), as the Logical Positivists say it is. For example, it is by linguistic convention that 'bachelor' means 'never married male human of marriageable age', but I deny that truths such as "All bachelors are unmarried" are true solely by convention and not at all to fact.

If you mean by fact a statement about the physical world, then this is indeed not a fact but only true by convention. A fact is something you can verify empirically, but no one is going to look whether there might be somewhere a married bachelor, he doesn't exist by definition.

Now we are getting closer to the hear of our disagreement. The reason why we don't check for married bachelors is that the bachelor kind is what I call a Shallow Kind, which means that it has only a few kind attributes (i.e., attributes its members have in common) and so has a simple concept and can be simply and easily defined. So when we first learning the meaning of term 'bachelor' we can learn all of these attributes and do, and know that these are all of the common attributes there are, so there is no need to look for any more.

That is all there is to it: individuals and classes, some of which are kinds, having varying degrees of depth (i.e., varying numbers of common attributes) (with different fields of study studying kinds with different degrees of depth: biological kinds are deeper than chemical kinds which are deeper than mechanical kinds, etc), some of which kinds having such a small number of common attributes that they can be learned when we learn the meanings of the term referring to the kinds.

These are the realities of the situation, but they have led many philosophers to believe that truths expressing attributes of Shallow Kinds are fundamentally different from other truths, to imagine that they are known by non-empirical means, and even to imagine that they are created by us (are products of our minds or our language) and so say nothing about reality. But these latter beliefs are simply illusions, and in general unnecessary suppositions, as the facts about the truths are explained adequately by the differences between individuals and classes, between Narrow Classes and Wide Classes (Kinds), by the differences between kinds having varying degrees of depth (and differences between fields of study studying kinds with different degrees of depth), without positing these dichotomies of truths. There are truths about different subject matters, but their differences are not differences in their truth.

For example, suppose I make up two new mathematical concepts, defined as follows:

a minyak = a geometric region bounded by a figure with 28 equal straight sides of 1 inch in length

a munyak = a geometric region bounded by figure with 29 equal straight sides of 1 inch in length

Both of these are made up by me.

However, the ratio of the area of minyak to the area of a munyak is a definite quantity.

But it was not made up by me. I don't even know what it is.

Rather, it is fact, existing independently of me.

You make here a number of silent assumptions. First I suppose that your minyak and manyak are regular polygons (which is not implicit in your definition), otherwise the answer would be indefinite: there are infinitely many possibilities.

Yes, I left out part of the definition. I meant to say:

a minyak = a geometric region bounded by a figure with 28 equal straight sides of 1 inch in length and having 28 equal angles

a munyak = a geometric region bounded by figure with 29 equal straight sides of 1 inch in length and having 29 equal angles

Second, you probably think of the Euclidean metric for your definition of "area".

In that case you'll get some definite answer (if I haven't made an error somewhere it should be 28/29 * tan (pi/29) / tan (pi/28) = .932235...). But you could as well have chosen a different metric which would give a different result.

Yes, I was thinking of Euclidean figures. I thought that saying that the sides were straight would rule out others. But rather than have us start a debate over this side issue, I will add Euclidean to my definitions, thus:

a minyak = a geometric region bounded by a Euclidean figure with 28 equal straight sides of 1 inch in length and having 28 equal angles

a munyak = a geometric region bounded by Euclidean figure with 29 equal straight sides of 1 inch in length and having 29 equal angles

So your answer is not some physical fact, but a logical truth which depends on the assumptions you've made. It is true that someone else who made the same assumptions would come up with the same result, so it does indeed exist independently of you.

They are not assumptions, but elements of stipulative definition (equivalent to a conventional definition, except made by only one person). But I think that's what you meant, because you want to say that my answer is a logical truth that depends on arbitrary linguistic choice (convention or stipulation).

However, I reply by pointing out that ALL truth depends, in part, on linguistic choice. To use Quine's example, even the truth 'Brutus killed Caesar' (which is factual, empirical, probably contingent and supposedly synthetic, and moreover it about individual rather than a class) depends for its truth on the fact that Brutus did kill Caesar but also on the linguistic convention which assigns them their names in our language: had those conventions been different the sentence 'Brutus killed Caesar' could easily be false. And Peikoff and I, and Quine, say that it a mistake to think that any truth is true solely by convention.

But this is an existence in an abstract, Platonic realm, not in the physical world.

There is no Platonic realm or purely abstract entities or Platonic Forms or Ideas. If you think there are you must argue for them. I, and most philosophers since the 1200s, and most modern scientists who think about philosophy, will need to be persuaded of their existence.

By the way, I am glad to see that you think that the dichotomies you believe in need to rest on Platonic doctrines. Most people in modern times who believe as you do, such as the Logical Positivists, see themselves as poles apart from Platonism. But your stand supports Peikoff's belief that those poles are really two sides of the same coin, and his tracing of the dichotomies back to Platonism.

Now in circumstances where Euclidean geometry works well in models of the physical world, the result will be close to what you would measure with your physical instruments, but only as far as Euclidean geometry gives a good description of physical systems.

All geometries, if they have any truth in them and any value of them, say something about possible ways the world can be. Those that only approximate the actual world are idealizations. But idealizations exist in physics, too: Newton's First Axiom (which considers the ideal state of a body with no forces acting on it) and the Ideal Gas Law.

[Gregory Browne]

To say that some of the rules of one's moral code can be dispensed with in emergencies is a feature of any sensible moral code.

What is an "emergency". Is it not possible to declare an "emergency" in such a way as one may do what he pleases to do?

In effect you are saying morality applies everywhere except where it does not apply.

Ba'al Chatzaf

We do need to come up with some objective standards of what an emergency is.

For now, I will make the point that not all moral rules are equally important, and while, under normal conditions, moral rules do not conflict, in extraordinary cases they can, and when this happens we must follow the more important and ignore the less important.

For example, temporarily stealing a car or a gun in order to prevent a kidnapper from driving off with a victim.

[Gregory Browne]

Greg, this note pertains to your #148. Thank you for that one and for all the other remarks you have made in this thread.

Stephen,

You're welcome.

I certainly agree that there are facts about possibilities that are more wide-ranging than facts about the actual. So just as Leibniz would say that truth is correspondence to reality actual or possible, we rightly say that facts are the truthmakers of both physical truths and mathematical truths. The possible includes the actual, of course, but just as the posssible outruns the actual, mathematics outruns physics.

Yes. As long as it is not true that all truths are necessary (as Spinoza thought) then the range of the possible is more than the actual.

So far, I continue to think there is a principled difference in the character of the truths of the formal disciplines of pure logic and pure mathematics (including set theory and category theory), on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the character of the truths of science and ordinary perceptual experience. The evidence we adduce to establish the truth of the four-color-map theorem is systematically of a different kind from the evidence we adduce to solve the problem of "missing" solar neutrinos. Facts are being creatively established in both cases. Already-established mathematics is relied on in both cases, and new physics is forever one of the sources of suggestion for new directions of mathematical development. Nonetheless, the systematic differences of method we have evolved for these disciplines remains. I still expect that a correct articulation of those differences can yield a valid distinction among truths, a distinction sharing aspects of past versions of the synthetic-analytic distinction.

I believe the difference in the evidence we adduce to answer those two questions derives from the nature of their subject matter, rather than from a difference in truth qua truth. The 4-color-map theorem, as a mathemetical theorem, deals with a Shallow Kind. In contrast, neutrinos are a Deep Kind. Yes, even though they are a topic in physics: not all of physics deals with Shallow Kinds. I think mechanics-- specifically, Newton's Axioms--deals with Shallow Kinds, such as bodies and forces, but other branches of physics, such as those dealing with atomic particles, deal with Deep Kinds. (It is instructive that the discoverer of quarks--Feynman?--labelled them not with a description but with a name, selecting a word hitherto used in one of James Joyce's works. Deep Kinds should be referred to by names, as individuals should be, because they are too deep to be accurately captured by a description; only Shallow Kinds should be referred to by descriptions. This is contrary to those who hold "the Description Theory of Meaning", such as most of the Logical Positivists.)

However, I am not familiar with the problem of "missing" solar neutrinos. Is that the sun has none, contrary to expectation? Now this might be the search for the cause of their absence in the sun, which would be a causal connection concerning an individual, rather than a kind. Or is does it concern the reason for their absence in all stars, or whether in fact stars have neutrinos? Stars are a Deep Kind.

In any case, I think that there is a difference here, and I think that my distinction between Shallow Kinds and Deep Kinds will explain it. Truths about Shallow Kinds are analytic and necessary, and appear to be a prior and non-factual, though they are not; truths about Deep Kinds are empirical and factual, and appear to be synthetic and contingent, thought they are not. The study of Shallow Kinds is best done more geometrico (in the manner of geometry), but the study of Deep Kinds is not, but both methods are versions of demonstrative science: science that starts with knowledge of necessary truths and then deduces further truths from them; the difference is that with Deep Kinds we have to go out and discover these necessary truths, whereas in Shallow Kinds we gain them by analysis of definition or concept we learn when we learn the meaning of the terms referring to them.

I should perhaps mention for you Greg that my philosophy of mathematics is structuralist, and empiricist in the broad sense of Kitcher. Eventually, I hope to deliver the further work (paper publication) on the synthetic-analytic issue anticipated as part of my "With-Measurement Program" described at the site RoR: http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Boydst...t_Program.shtml

Unfortunately I have only a little knowledge of philosophy of mathematics. Is structuralism a kind of Formalism? (By the way, I tend to agree with Formalims in math, though I don't believe math is purely formal in the sense in which those who believe in the dichotomies do.)

I am glad to hear that you are an empiricist about math, at least in some sense. Is Kitcher Philip Kitcher, who wrote, with Kyle Stanford, "Refining the Causal Theory of Reference for Natural Kind Terms"?

I looked at your article. It sounds interesting. I will have to read it carefully.

[Gregory Browne]

This is analogous to selecting the rules for a game fairly. For example, consider pool: there are many different games of pool we could play. We have a choice of games, a choice of rules. None of these rules is unfair; we have no obligation to choose or reject any of them. However, once we agree to choice one of these games, one of these sets of rules, we have a moral obligation to play by them, and any breaking of such a rule is unfair.

Greg,

I only have one problem with the game idea for logic: purpose. This must be kept in mind when making rules if any meaningful activity is to follow.

With pool, if the purpose is not to make a competitive game where the only determining factors of the outcome are chance applied equally to the contestants and their skill, we could make rules saying that a person could pick a ball up and put it in a hole anytime he wanted to, or that he could sit on the pool table while the other was taking a shot, or that he could put as many balls on the table as he wishes at any moment, etc. If the purpose is as I stated, a competitive game, there is one factor that cannot be breached in the rules: reality (causality), and this applies without exception to his purpose.

The same goes for logic. We can have a set of rules, but we have to base them on reality if we want to use logic for obtaining knowledge (the purpose). For instance, we cannot have a word mean one thing one time, then mean something unrelated at another in the same formulation. We can do that if we want to play word games. But we cannot if we want to obtain knowledge.

I would say that the purpose determines the fundamental nature of the rules.

Michael

I didn't mean that logic is game. The analog of logic is the case I described is moral obligation or moral fairness.

Regarding morality, several different games of pool (8-ball, pea pool, golf pool, etc.) are all fair and so morally permissible (though they may differ in their advantages), and so it is morally permissible to choose among them, but once chosen, it is not morally permissible to choose to violate the rules we have chosen: morality dictates that we do not do so.

Regarding morality, several different definitions of a term in a premise may all be logically permissible (though they may differ in their advantages), and so it is logically permissible to choose among them, but once chosen, it is not logically permissible to choose to deduce conclusions contrary to the definitions of the terms in our premises, which definitions we have chosen: logic dictates that we do not do so.

[Daniel Barnes]

Mike:

>What is your view of the nature of concepts?

"Concept" is another word for an idea. There is not much more you can sensibly say.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

"Concept" is another word for an idea. There is not much more you can sensibly say.

Daniel,

Then what is an idea? Is it something that happens in dreams? While looking around you? During sex?

The word "idea" is not really a "view of the nature" that I requested.

This reminds me of those words in simple dictionaries where you look up Word A and the definition is Word B. When you look up Word B, the definition is Word A. That is a circular nothing.

Imagine that I am seeking knowledge to build a thinking system and not just a word game as I ask again:

What is your view of the nature of concepts (or ideas)?

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

An "emergency" is when you are outside of society--society, i.e., the law, is not represented in the social situation. You still have your "rights" philosophically, but not practically. Force and guile rule. Force secures rights legally through government, which may use guile too. Government is always dealing with emergencies, big and small. Governments, practically, have no rights, just the citizens.

I've argued in previous writing that government is illusory and impotent. Nor do I think government is adept at dealing with emergencies, although government habitually creates disasters. If force and guile rule outside the law, how is this better when government rules by force and guile? And worse: I think you said an emergency is when society is not represented in a social situation, which sounds like gibberish.

I don't mean to offend. Like Margaret Thatcher said: There is no such thing as society.

W.

I didn't say "initiate force."

If government is "illusory" it can't be "impotent" or anything else.

Thatcher was wrong about many things.

--Brant

[Guyau]

Greg, this is a follow-up on #168.

Four-Color Map Theorem

All possible maps can be colored using only four colors (or can be covered using only four grades of sandpaper, etc.) such that all neighboring regions are colored differently. This proposition was posed in 1852. The challenge was to prove its truth. This proof-problem is the same problem for maps on a sphere or on a plane. A proof was finally found in 1976, after old and new areas of mathematics had been developed further.

Solar-Neutrino Problem

Beginning in 1968 experimental counts of neutrinos reaching the earth from the sun were found to be less than half the number expected according to our understanding of the nuclear-fusion process by which they are produced in the sun. There are three types of matter neutrinos (and three types of anti-matter neutrinos, and perhaps, a seventh neutrino, called “sterile” [which might constitute the negative-pressure sea we call “dark energy”]). These are the electron-, muon-, and tau-neutrinos. Our detectors for the solar neutrinos were for the electron-neutrinos. One possible explanation for the missing solar electron-neutrinos was that they might be spontaneously converting into muon- or tau-neutrinos to which those detectors were blind. But such conversions could only occur if the rest-masses of neutrinos were nonzero (and different between the three types), and it was thought that neutrinos were massless, like photons. During the 90’s it was established experimentally that neutrinos do convert back and forth from one type to another (and, therefore, they have some mass). In 2001 it was established experimentally that electron-neutrinos coming from the sun were being converted into muon- and tau-neutrinos in an amount correct for explaining the electron-neutrino deficit. The solar neutrino problem was solved.

Wilson, Robin 2002. Four Colors Suffice: How the Map Problem Was Solved. Princeton.

Bahcall, John 1990. “The Solar-Neutrino Problem” Sci. Am. (May).

Kearns, Kajita, and Totsuki 1999. “Detecting Massive Neutrinos” Sci. Am. (Aug).

Collins, Graham 2001. “Sudbury Neutrino Observatory nus Is Good News” Sci. Am. (Sep, pp. 18-19).

For the major varieties of structuralism in contemporary philosophy of mathematics, see:

Hellman, Geoffrey 1989. Mathematics without Numbers. Oxford.

Shapiro, Stewart 1997. Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology. Oxford.

Resnik, Michael 1997. Mathematics as a Science of Patterns. Oxford.

Chihara, Charles 2004. A Structural Account of Mathematics. Oxford.

Some of these structuralists are more realist, some more nominalist. So I expect they have a range of ways in which they would distinguish mathematical truth from physical truth. The more nominalistic structuralists seem to be the closest to formalism, but even the nominalist Chihara rejects the fictionalist spin that used to be placed on formalism and nominalism.

The empirical theory of Kitcher to which I alluded in #153 is the view he advanced in The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge (1984 Oxford). This view and the way in which it is an empiricist view is examined in the 1993 Objectivity essay “Mathematic Empiric” by Daniel Ust. Click on Volume 1, Number 6 at www.objectivity-archive.com.

[Wolf DeVoon]

I didn't say "initiate force."

If government is "illusory" it can't be "impotent" or anything else.

Thatcher was wrong about many things.

--Brant

Okay. I respect your point of view. However, it's pretty clear that government initiates force routinely: taxation, regulation, invasion, regime change, stressful interrogation and such. Big range of mala prohibitum enforcement by local and state authorities, emminent domain, licensing of professions.

It is illusory that government regulation achieves its putative purpose of protecting citizens. Alan Greenspan borrowed Gresham's Law to explain that 'Bad protection drives out good.'

Impotent to halt illegal immigration, murder, assault.

W.

Edited June 3, 2007 by Wolf DeVoon

[Brant Gaede]

I didn't say "initiate force."

If government is "illusory" it can't be "impotent" or anything else.

Thatcher was wrong about many things.

--Brant

Okay. I respect your point of view. However, it's pretty clear that government initiates force routinely: taxation, regulation, invasion, regime change, stressful interrogation and such. Big range of mala prohibitum enforcement by local and state authorities, emminent domain, licensing of professions.

It is illusory that government regulation achieves its putative purpose of protecting citizens. Alan Greenspan borrowed Gresham's Law to explain that 'Bad protection drives out good.'

Impotent to halt illegal immigration, murder, assault.

W.

And you suggest ...?

--Brant