tjohnson

Yes, this is what I have been saying in this and another thread, logic works perfectly in mathematics but not in 'real' life. If you try and apply logic in a strict manner to 'real' life you are doomed to failure. When was the last time you used a syllogism to make a decision? [premise1] I like cheese [premise2] This is cheese [conclusion] I like this cheese (he then eats it and finds that he hates blue cheese) Damn this logic!

OK, what do mean by 'true'?

Is that the one that states that something can both be and not be something? Like something can not be a wave AND a particle? Oh wait, yes it can!

Physics is applied math, not mathematics. If 'reality' obeyed the laws of mathematics we would never have to adjust our theories since each law would be true forever, but this is not the case. In physics, we cannot define the objects perfectly as we can in mathematics and so there will always be new information and so adjustments. So mathematics does apply to reality, but only in a limited fashion. Objectivism (personification) seems to want to take Aristotle's simple rules of logic and apply them to 21st century life on earth, well, good luck with that!

Who says it's an extraordinary claim? When the majority of people believe in god then it's the atheists who are not ordinary.

I don't think so, I don't believe in death. I believe I will move to a different form of existence. Can you prove I'm wrong? I can argue with everything you say and so you're statements are only 'true' to other believers of your statements. I believe there IS something going on independent of us but any statements about it are subject to assumptions and agreement by others. If there was only one person on earth he could state 'truths' all day long and they would definitely be true, since no one could argue with him. Of course, why would a single organism evolve ways to communicate with others? No, I'm sorry but if you open your mouth and say something then it is your opinion, period. It may be a very well educated opinion, make all the sense in the world, but it is still opinion. Even the most exact sciences are subject to some opinion.

Propositions may be true on one level but false on another. Someone can always argue with even the most self-evident statements. 'Truth' depends on agreement so you and I could agree something is true while others may think it's false. You can argue till you are blue in the face that there is no god yet billions of people on earth believe this is so. In science there is a well developed system to evaluate 'trueness' and 'falseness' but we are free to accept this system or reject it (to the detriment of all).

No, I'm referring to uncertainty principles. In our attempt to observe something we alter it and so this blurs the line between observer and observed. This does not, however, invalidate determinism, it mean we must adopt a different kind of 00-valued, probabilistic determinism, which is what QM does.

The problem is that Aristotles's so-called 'laws of thought' do not work in modern science. They work in mathematics and they will remain a valuable tool there but in 'real' life even A=A does not work, since at sub atomic levels everything is in a constant state of change.

Why does everything have to be 2-valued, yes or no, true or false, etc. ? Life is not like that and it seems to me that a life orientation devoted to 'reality', like objectivism, should have realized that by now?

It depends.

Here is another 'intuitive' way of looking at it, take a number like 123.45 In positional notation (base 10) this number breaks down to this. 1x10^2 + 2x10^1 + 3x10^0 + 4x10^(-1) + 5x10^(-2) So you see it's right there in front of us, 3x10^0= 3 therefore 10^0 =1 Of course this doesn't prove x^0=1 for all x but it does give one a good idea about why it must be so, I think.

There is one obvious difference between mathematics and natural language. In mathematics definitions include ALL particulars and so deductions work absolutely, if correctly made. In natural languages there are always characteristics present that are not accounted for and so deductions can only ever work relatively well. Not exactly sure how this relates to the analytic-synthetic debate but it seems important.

You could say that, Well, you could say that science is an attempt to differentiate just that - what structure is independent of the observer, in other words, what structure is repeatable by other observers, and what is 'subjective', or personal.

I would like to explore some ideas of general semantics and objectivism and contrast and compare them as I see similar goals in these disciplines, at least potentially. So to begin with I'll use this introductory overview by Kat. GS also holds that there is an unpeakable environment in which we are immersed but it doesn't use the term 'reality'. In general semantics there is a notion called 'multiordinality' which states that many words we use regularly, like 'reality' mean different things on different levels of abstraction. So for example, someone who is hallucinating may 'really' see something which is not there and this is THEIR reality, so even though we live in something independent of our nervous system our only exposure to it is through our nervous system, none the less. Because our knowledge of this 'reality' (some call it WIGO - What Is Going On) comes to us mainly through science, we call this level the event level to denote that it is in a constant state of change as modern science has discovered. Our perceptual process of the event is called the objective level so 'reality' can mean the event level or the objective level and of course these are two very different things.

I don't understand a couple of your points but I will answer what I can. One view of numbers (Korzybski's) is that they represent unique, specific, exact, symetrical and asymetrical relations. He also defines mathematics as a language capable of expressing multiordinal relations and structure in an exact form. The word 'exact' is very important in the definition since this is only possible in a language that allows no other characteristics except those found in the definitions of objects. So a 'circle' is defined as 'the locus of points equidistant from a point called the center', for example. There is no such thing in nature, but there are things that look like circles and yes, the idea of a circle certainly came from these. I couldn't agree more that math is not divorced from 'reality' as I indicated above, I believe it is a language closely related to how we actually perceive 'reality'. It may be possible to teach math without counting, one could start with group theory, which formalizes all the various number systems without any mention of counting.

Technically, when you use numbers to count things it is called applied math, albeit it's a very simple application. In pure mathematics there are no 'things' to count. One of the reasons mathematics is so unpopular in our education system is the belief that 'pure' math is not good for anything and we have to always apply it somewhere. Korzybski helped me understand that mathematics is important for far more than being applicable to some physical theory - he suggested that it was actually similar in structure to our nervous system. When you think about it, all languages represent something right? So what does 'pure' mathematics represent? It may just be possible that it represents the actual workings of the nervous system as it abstracts structure from our environment - quite a radical idea! For example, integral calculus is a process that takes a bunch of 'static pictures' and integrates them into a continuously changing image. This sounds remarkably like what our eyes do with discrete nervous impulses from the stimulation by light. Some of the terminology of advanced mathematics is extremely suggestive - check out topology, category theory, fiber bundles, etc. and you might be surprised at what goes on in 'advanced' mathematics.

Actually, I'm saying there must be some structure to events around us, for example, we see the sun 'rise' everyday' (if it's not overcast) . This is a similar event that occurs repeatedly and that similarity exists independent of any observer. This is an assumption of course since to prove it we have to observe it. 'Knowledge' represents 'similarity of structure', in other words when our language is similar in structure to the events. This means that the language is such that it 'explains' the event and can predict events reasonably well. If the knowledge ('theory', etc.) no longer can explain events then it is altered periodically, like when special relativity was introduced to account for the fact that the speed of light always measures the same no matter what the relative speed of the observer. All of this would be impossible if there was no similarity of events around us as there would be no structure to them then.

'Fact' is a word, period. The word 'fact' means different thing on different levels of abstraction. On verbal levels it means, roughly, 'a statement that most reasonable people would agree with' or something. But on objective, non-verbal levels, it refers to some occurence inside your nervous system, like some nervous activity resulting in a perceived noise. It can also mean an event outside our skin altogether.

We do this because it is advantageous for us to do so. This is the essence of abstraction, emphasizing similarities while ignoring differences. Abstraction occurs in lower level, non-verbal, perceptual processes AND on higher level, verbal cognitive processes. Our eyes are immersed in EM waves but we only sense a small range of frequencies and so we abstract (get some, but not all) of potential information from our environment. Language and scientific instruments, etc. can be considered an extension of the human nervous system that allows us to potentially increase our range of experience and so expose more detail of the underlying structure of our environment. But the structure is there, and if it did not manifest itself as similar repeatedly we would never be able to abstract it.

Yes and SOME of those vibrations would be similar, with or without an observer, like when the wind whistles through the trees. I'm not sure there is any way to prove this either way. :cry: What about electrons, wouldn't it be safe to assume one electron is similar to the next? We can't sense electrons so you're argument about similarity only existing in perception won't apply there.

Do you count dogs as 'sentients'? If not, how does he find his master with his nose if not by 'similar' chemicals given of by the master? The same could be said of almost any organism, in fact, even, molecules recognize similarities with chemical specific receptor sites.

This position seems totally backwards to me. It is only after perceiving a number of similar 'things' that we can form a concept. After observing a number of 'things with hard, rough, slender, long parts coming out of the ground with branches and green things on them' we call this image 'a tree'. A child would ostensibly perceive these similarities as well but wouldn't know what the concept name was or it's definition until it was told.

According to special relativity, there is NO absolute length of an object - the length that we measure will depend on our state of motion. In an optical illusion, we don't know what the length IS, but rather we think we know what it will be when we measure it, and the result will be quite different from what it appears to be.

My 2 cents; 'Proof' is a notion that belongs in mathematics only. "Proof' implies a sort of finality that is only possible in a field where we are speaking about imaginary things. 'Proof' is possible in mathematics because all particulars are in included in our definitions and so our deductions work absolutely, if properly made. As Baal and Dragonfly pointed out above, in physics we only have theories with a certain amount of 'similarity of structure' (a GS term) and at any given time they do not account for all phenomena.