Re: Torkel Franzén is dead

George Dance wrote:
All right; that's a good place to begin by introducing evidence. So
I'd like to introduce the following link, which I'll label Exhibit B
(Exhibit A was the quote from his exchange with xyz):

http://tinyurl.com/lmyxl

Read it and make your own judgement. I would make two claims about
that thread: :

1) In it, Torkel advances his thesis that there are some people who are
incapable of understanding symbolic logic; and that for them to try use
it would only muddle their thinking. (For convenience, I will call
those "Submathematical" humans, or SMs.)

Until I have time to respond to the rest of George Dance's posts, I
want to catch the above comment.

What Franzen actually wrote in that thread is:

"Formal logic is essentially a mathematical
subject, and experience supports neither the idea that people who
reason well in non-mathematical contexts should have an aptitude for
formal logic, nor the idea that a study of formal logic will help
people reason well in non-mathematical contexts."

Maybe elsewhere Franzen claimed that there are people incapable of
understanding symbolic logic (well, there are people who are incapable,
so what is at stake is a claim that some people who are otherwise
fairly intelligent are incapable of understanding symbolic logic). But
in the very thread that George Dance cites, Franzen did NOT mention
incapability but rather that certain people who are otherwise logical
don't have an APTITUDE for symbolic logic. To say that someone does not
have an aptitude (in the sense of a talent or special inclination) for
something isn't a claim that he or she is incapable of understanding
it. I don't have an aptitude for car mechanics, but I am capable of
understanding it if I choose to concentrate upon it. Nor does Franzen
argue that the fact that some people who lack aptitude get muddled with
symbolic logic entails that they must always be muddled by it. But most
important here is that Dance goes on to call such people
"submathematical humans". But that is entirely unsuitable if we are
discussing Franzen's, not Dance's, views on this matter, since Franzen
never devised such a rubric, which as it is devised by Dance, carries
truly terrible connotations such as 'sub-human' and other rubrics of
horrible ideologies. There is nothing gained in evaluating Franzen's
views by tainting them with such horrible connotations; I suggest that
Dance let Franzen's remarks speak for themselves and that Dance not
burden Franzen with rubrics that Franzen did not himself propose.

MoeBlee

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