Re: parallels


"John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eolnpd$29ej$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


"g" <gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
JE:-
Gil, this is a science list and not just a logic or mathematics list. What
is required of everybody here, including myself and Mr Koskensilta, are
the
following three things.


i) Defined terms.

ii) Use of self consistent arguments (no contradictions allowed).

iii) Provide verifiable and refutable premises not just premises which
can be verified or non verified.

If I label terms differently (which I take great pains to avoid doing but
I
may have to define new concepts with new labels because the concept has
not
been previously employed) then all that has to be done is for the
respondent
to provide the more accepted label.

John,

Much good will and much deserved respect.

But with all due good will and deserved respect, please allow me to assert
that my best efforts, so far, to believe that any human could define any
"natural" universal set would require that he know all things within that
set, lest he fail to have tweaked his definition sufficiently to encompass
the very last twit of it.

Also, I have not doubted for an instant that some human may have come
up with a pure logic definition that he has elected to name "the universal
set."
Indeed, it would surprise me if at least one human had not -- in view of the
fact that my experience leads me to believe that humans have come up with
innumerable definitions and provided them with some name for purposes of
reference.

What I do not personally ACCEPT, albeit I approve with much enthusiasm
YOUR right to accept it, if you wish -- is that there can be "the"
definition
of anything in nature derivable by any human mind, nor "the" definition of
anything in pure logic derived by any human mind.

Do I believe that man can, and should, TRY to arrive at "the" definition of
anything in nature? Yes, so long as he does not delude himself that he has
capability of proving he has succeeded at it. But rest assured that any
were to come along who know everything about everything, and that if you
and I likewise could, and that person were to provide us a definition of
"the"
universal set... I would certainly be willing to consider modifying my
choice
of "belief" on this point. Let us not presume that human would be male,
although some would estimate the probability as approximately 50 %.

I personally elect, and feel justified in so electing, to be a bit skeptical
that
any definition of anything is "the" definition of it. Can I prove it is
not?
No. Nor do I believe you can prove that it is. And this is, I think, a
perfect
example of the kind of thing I alluded to in saying elsewhere that I cannot
argue with anything that you say, John, if I grant you your choice of
I-believes (forsaking my own).

I am in total concurrence with Jack Nicholson's character in the movie
"A Few Good Men," who when asked to tell the "truth" about what was at
issue in a military court hearing, "You couldn't handle "the truth."

Nor, do I believe, could I. We have not -- either you nor I -- access to
the
truth, but do each perceive we have at least a little exposure to some of
its consequences and its symptoms. And... again all I offer is my
far-more-than-CASUALLY-thought-through and *tentatively held*
opinions on anything. And, so far as I have been persuaded, neither has
any other human.

I know I've said it to death... but if even one reader doesn't know this,
I don't want to give the wrong impression. But... Dr. Einstein once
asserted that he had tried (in coming up with some of his definitions,
or advanced-for-his-time perceptions, as I intuit them to have been)
to look at things as Gd (or gd) sees them. Now let me be REMIND
that it DOES NOT MATTER whether he was referring to a deity or
to what an atheistic physicist would intend by it as the aggregate of
the aggregate sum of all existential algorithms playing out in the
aggregate sum of all nature. It works either way. Einstein sought to
put himself in that mode. But then there came along for him to digest
some incompatibilities between micromechanical and quantum
mechanical "laws" which (so far as I know) NOBODY has reconciled.
And the thing about "rolling the dice" suggests to me that Dr. Einstein
withdrew from the Gd's mind arena, or gd's mind arena -- whichever
the case may be.

In any and every human contemplation (per the best of my humble
human capabilities to know or to understand anything) the
contemplation of anything and everything in nature tests human
capacity to be ingenious (no, not engenuous... but ingenious)...
a term I proffer here in tune with Bertrand Russell's definition of
genius...
a term which refers to what Nobel Laureate John Nash sought after...
and failed to attain... and a term which seems to me to coexist only
uncomfortably with Nash's stance that mathematics is a fiercely
competitive sport, or his stance that doing something with the mind
is far more sensible than attending classes on what others have done
with theirs.

From the best of my experience and thoughts that I can come up
with, in contemplating your stance on any given thing, or the stance
of the greatest genius who ever may have lived, I perceive all the
highest and best any has to offer (so far) as tentative, as
not inclusive of all the information yet unknown to any, and as
likely to imply paradoxes we humans have no choice but to deny,
or accepting them..., to have to exercise genius to maintain the
ability to think rationally about them.

When I seek to comprehend what others have defined, I reserve the
right to do what I can with the elements they considered in my own
mind... if and to the extent I can... and if I DISCERN MORE
elements to be worthy of consideration than any given human definer
has taken into account in his personal preferences among
unprovable assumptions, OR if I see that the blocks of reason can be
assembled (as in a Rubik's cube) in more than one order, then I am
skeptical that they have come up with anything aptly containing
the designation "the ".

I shall not be drawn into a discussion of truth/validity tables. Neither
of us has any need of revisiting such well-worn drills. Also, let me
share with you that I do not know of any mathematician who EVER
has defined all his terms and proved them all, beyond arbitrarily
closed models (consisting of definitions, operations eclectically
posited, and leading only to where that closed artifice leads, with
the snake of a closed validity model, propagating itself only by
hanging on tooth and claw to the tip of its own internally forced,
logical tail.

(:>)

g


.

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