Re: An ordered pair with Sheffer's stroke?

From: Barb Knox (see_at_sig.below)
Date: 12/09/04 

Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 11:16:35 +1300

In article <a5017940.0412090801.55c28b56@posting.google.com>,
 tom_bergson@yahoo.com (Tom) wrote:

>Dear Mrs Knox,
>(For some reason I am (temporarily) unable to make a direct response
>to your post. The system answers: "Unable to retrieve message
>cp805f$tga$1@lust.ihug.co.nz". I tried several different servers with
>the same result. All I can do is post again with an identical subject
>line. I am very sorry for this incovenience.)
>
>Thank you very much indeed for writing.

You're welcome.

>I am so happy to have someone
>really competent to communicate my ideas to.

I hope I'm competent enough to do you some good, but please note that I am
not a professional logician or mathematician. Regarding logic, there are
several more-competent regular posters to this NG (as well as several loons
of course). IOW, *you* are responsible for judging the value of any post,
and would be ill-advised to take anything on faith or presumed authority.

>I NEVER will contradict you on anything,

Now that's definitely a mistake. Note that my original reply contained an
error!

>and if I somehow sound like it, it is because I am
>unable to become unstuck from my misconceptions.
>
>Mrs Knox, I am not hiding I am taken competely aback by your kind
>post. It means I am completely wrong on everything. I gave it several
>hours of a serious thought, and concluded - I must be completely
>confused.
>
>Hopefully, you will kindly reflect on the several lines below and
>utter a line or two of criticism which could possibly give me a clear
>sense of direction.
>
>Imho, there exist only objects and concepts / thoughts /
>configurations / relationships. An object is an absolute /
>autoaffirmative / self-identical existence (Aristotle's first
>substance) of which we know nothing apart from the fact that it exists
>and that it enters into certain configurations with other objects. Two
>objects differ if they may enter into different configurations.
>The essence of an object is its ability to coexist or to be unable to
>coexist (to enter configurations) with particular other objects.
>
>A thought is (nothing but) a configuration of objects (i.e. it is a
>proposition, a lingustic object). A proposition is an objectivized
>concept / thought. A proposition speaks of its world through
>isomorphism (it is the ONLY way).

I'm also not a professional philosopher, but that sounds rather like the
view of Wittgenstein's _Tractatus_, a view which he repudiated in later
works.

>The stroke is an objectivized pure thought which isomorphically speaks
>of a configuration of two objects. It represents, through isomorphism,
>a configuration, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the
>existence of that configurations.

Note that the ONLY objects within the world of truth functions are "True"
and "False". Or to put less of a philosopical load on the terms, "1" and
"0". These abstract objects really have nothing directly to do with the
real world, with "existence" in any sense, or with much else at all.

>Imho, my mistake(s) must be due to naively interpreting TLP:

ISTM you are adequately interpreting it; it's just that TLP is far from the
last word.

>1. The world is everything that is [[[[*the case.
>2. What is the case, the fact, is*]]]] the existence of atomic facts.
>2.01 An atomic fact is a combination of objects (entities, things).
>2.011 It is essential to a thing that it can be a constituent part of
>an atomic fact.
>
>2.1 We make to ourselves pictures of facts.
>2.11 The picture presents the facts in logical space, the existence
>and non-existence of atomic facts.
>3. The logical picture of the facts is the thought.
>3.2 In propositions thoughts can be so expressed that to the objects
>of the thoughts correspond the elements of the propositional sign.
>
>4. The thought is the significant proposition.
>4.21 The simplest proposition, the elementary proposition, asserts the
>existence of an atomic fact.
>4.3 The truth-possibilities of the elementary propositions mean the
>possibilities of the existence and non-existence of the atomic facts.
>
>
>As for your other kind comments, Mrs Knox, I am unable to benefit from
>them until I have completely grasped the basics (above).

That seems like a needlessly difficult approach. "Completely grasping"
anything in philosophy is very difficult if not impossible. However, formal
logic (which is what I had assumed your original post was about) CAN be
thoroughly grasped without having to sort through millenia of philosophical
baggage.

>Again, I am terribly sorry for any misconceptions and
>misinterpretations.
>
>Thank you very much indeed for writing.
>
>Kindest regards,
>Tom 

-- 
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