HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
Subject: Re: Impredicativity - was: Russell's Paradox
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
	<1992Nov5.004725.8252@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>
	<TORKEL.92Nov5100828@isis.sics.se>
	<1992Nov5.170056.21983@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 22:22:23 GMT

In article <1992Nov5.170056.21983@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> pratt@Sunburn.
Stanford.EDU (Vaughan R. Pratt) writes:

   >I find an
   >AFA world very appealing, but clearly it's not for everyone.  I claim
   >no more.

  But how are your views incompatible with anything claimed by anybody
else (as was suggested by your earlier comments about the cumulative
hierarchy)? The cumulative hierarchy is a mathematical structure
described and envisaged by people like Zermelo. There is nothing in
what Zermelo says that rules out other mathematical structures being
described and envisaged. There is nothing in what Zermelo says that
implies that people who speak about "sets" must mean sets in the sense
of Zermelo. The idea that "set" means something definite, on which
people may have conflicting and incompatible opinions, is not on the
face of it any more justified than the idea that "number" means
something definite on which people may have conflicting and
incompatible opinions. My interest may be in the natural numbers, but
this does not mean that somebody's explanation and investigation of the
complex numbers is in any sense "wrong" from my point of view. Similarly,
I understand (in a general way) sets in the sense of "iterated set of",
but this does not mean that I reject other notions. I'm quite
prepared to consider non-well-founded explanations of "set". I simply
don't see any conflict between such explanations and the cumulative
hiearchy.
Xref: sparky sci.logic:1903 sci.philosophy.meta:2347
From: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
Subject: Re: Natural Kinds (was re: Are all crows black?)
Originator: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 18:12:18 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.


Just some quick responses to an otherwise very long posting ...

In article <1992Nov5.171453.22237@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>, pratt@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Vaughan R. Pratt) writes:

> Now what I claimed in (B) was that hypotheses can be falsified in
> math.  Here Liebniz' hypothesis of the mathematical existence of
> infinitesimals, later endorsed by Cauchy, was eventually *falsified* by
> Dedekind.  (You can *prove* via reals as cuts that no real can be an
> infinitesimal, the only reals greater than 0 are too large to be
> infinitesimals.)  And my evidence for (C), the impermanence of
> falsification, is Robinson's restoration of infinitesimals to
> mathematically rigorous existence.

There is at least a real confusion here about *what* was "falsified".
It appears, at least from this story, that one *semantics* for 
a theory of infinitesimals was "falsified", while another semantics
(perhaps even for an at least slightly *different* theory) was not.

This story has a bit of the flavor of the claim that the existence
of phlogiston (the "active ingredient" in combustion) was falsified,
but that this (phlogistion) later really turned out to be oxygen!

> 
> The parallels with the corresponding story for particles and waves
> involve both (B) and (C) with physics in place of mathematics.  These
> intimate parallels makes it *very* hard to tease apart the processes of
> mathematics and physics in any useful way.

It remains not hard at all.  You may choose to attempt to minimize the
issue of direct empirical content as well as the significant methodological
differences, but these differences are nonetheless quite obvious.

You can take a mathematician and lock him in his little office with just
some writing materials and he will (a) be pretty happy, and (b) be able
and willing to do anything of a mathematical nature.  Even a committed
*theoretical* physicist will be very distressed under such circumstances
since he has not way to determining whether his theories (however abstract)
are *good* ones.

> The divergence between Natural Philosophy and Philosophy grew as the value 
> of knowing how many people a bridge could hold became economically more 
> important than knowing the number of angels that could fit on a pin ;-)
> 

I take this as an expression of some kind of ideology.  Certainly it is
not historically accurate.  The divergence has much more to do with the
development of *quantitative* methods and measurements, and (to use
a phrase beloved by some in the history of ideas and history of
philosophy) "the mechanization of the world picture".
-- 
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
Newsgroups: sci.logic,sci.philosophy.meta,sci.math
From: maj@waikato.ac.nz
Newsgroups: sci.logic,sci.classics
Subject: Re: Ad hominum
Date: 13 Nov 92 15:52:04 +1300
Organization: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

In article <BxK0uw.7tC@unx.sas.com>, sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
> 
> In article <1992Nov11.173613.12104@waikato.ac.nz>, maj@waikato.ac.nz writes:
> |> Gary Merrill in sci.classics :
> |> 
> |> 
> |> Brian, you're being really dense here.  The point is not what kinds
> |> of insight one acquires by being a woman, a slave, or a serf, but
> |> rather what *position* one may gain by being a "feminist philosopher",
> |> a "slave philospher",  or a "serf philosopher".
> |> 
> |> 
> |> 
> |> Gary Merrill in sci.logic  :
> |> 
> |> 
> |> Ah yes.  The ultimate academic bugaboo:  funding.  Everything (even your
> |> taxonomy of cognitive disciplines) must be a slave to funding.
> 
> No, not exactly.  While these remarks *might* be attacked as being
> certain types of fallacies of relevance, the fallacy in question
> are *not* ad hominem.  I refer you to Carney & Scheer, _Logic and
> Argument_ for the details (or any decent book on rhetoric).

Sorry. I know that there was no ad hominem in a technical sense.
And I was refering to *my* argumentation in maliciously quoting
you, rather that the structure of your *your* argument.

> 
> Moreover, since these were *not* offered as *arguments*, it is
> somewhat inaccurate to characterize them thus.  Think of them as
> armchair (though based on some experience with these matters)
> sociological observations concerning *why* certain things are of
> intense interest to academics at certain times.  I not, at least,
> that you do not impugn the *truth* of these remarks.
> 
Only indirectly, in that they appear to contradict each other, at
least if the 'must' in the second quote is intended to be ironic.

> -- 
> Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
> SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
> sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
-- 
Murray A. Jorgensen [ maj@waikato.ac.nz ]    University of Waikato
Department of Mathematics and Statistics     Hamilton, New Zealand      
__________________________________________________________________
'Tis the song of the Jubjub! the proof is complete,
if only I've stated it thrice.'
Newsgroups: sci.logic,sci.philosophy.meta
From: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
Subject: Re: Natural Kinds (was re: Are all crows black?)
Originator: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 13:37:08 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.


In article <1992Nov9.010144.18902@samba.oit.unc.edu>, Robert.Vienneau@launchpad.unc.edu (Robert Vienneau) writes:

|> I think one should also have some idea of what criteria 20th century
|> philosophers have put forward to demarcate science from non-science. I'd
|> like to suggest that if one is going to sound like one knows what one is
|> talking about, one should have at least a passing acquaintance with the
|> ideas of Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and Paul Feyerabend.

I'd like to suggest that this would provide a pretty narrow perspective
on 20th century philosophy of science since it provides a view from
only one particular "school" or "tradition".  Indeed, it is neither the
"received view" nor representative of the bulk of work in the philosophy
of science over (say) the last 20 years.
-- 
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
From: gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman)
Newsgroups: sci.logic
Subject: Re: Impredicativity - was: Russell's Paradox
Date: 7 Nov 92 03:48:57 GMT
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson

We better be careful or we're going to end up agreeing on more than
just the inadequacy of ZF.

In article  <1992Nov6.193134.17283@guinness.idbsu.edu> Randall Holmes writes:
]Re Gudeman:
]
]Your criterion for an acceptable property is wrong.
]
]...  Some perfectly well-defined open sentences which
]have truth values no matter what is substituted into them cannot have
]extensions or intensions.

OK, you have a point.  The open sentence "__ is not true of
itself" does not form a proposition if you replace the blanks with
something that stands for the sentence's (non-existent) proposition,
but then you can't expect _any_ open sentence to form a proposition if
you fill its blanks with non-existent things.  I'll have to rethink my
criterion, but that really does not affect my main point about
recursion.

]Once again, there is no problem with
]self-membership or non-self-membership holding of particular objects;
]there simply is no "object" which is the extension of
]"self-membership" or "non-self-membership".  And this does not mean
]that the objects in the universe are not unambiguously divided between
]the self-members and the non-self-members; there is no ambiguity, no
]gray area between them.  But there cannot be a set of the
]non-self-members.

I think we agree that there is no property (read "nonspatio-temporal
mathematical object") associated with the set of open sentences of the
form "__ is an element of __".  Our difference is that you think there
is a metaphysical explanation for this fact, and I think it can be
explained entirely in terms of incorrect use of language.
-- 
					David Gudeman
gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
From: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
Newsgroups: sci.logic
Subject: Re: Impredicativity - was: Russell's Paradox
Date: 5 Nov 92 09:31:34 GMT
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista

In article <Bx81Ho.9HL@cantua.canterbury.ac.nz> wft@math.canterbury.ac.nz 
(Bill Taylor) writes:

   >A = { 1 , { 2 , { 3 , { 4 , {.....}}}}}
   >B = { 1 , { 1 , { 1 , { 1 , {.....}}}}}
   >Can B above, be obtained from A above, by ZF methods.

  The question is vague in several respects, but the most likely
answer is no. A, to put this into formal ZF terms, is, let us say, the
range of a function f defined on the natural numbers, where
f(n)={n,f(n+1)} for all n.  Assuming the existence of such a function
in ZF (without foundation) does not in any obvious way (and hence not
at all, by the argument from experience) imply the existence of a set
x such that x={1,x}.  In particular, Replacement by itself is no help
since to get x using replacement, we need to define a function h by
h(n)=G(f(n)), where G({a,b})={1,G(b)}, and there is no way of defining
G in ZF (without foundation) so that this is provable. In other words:
Replacement allows us to make infinite "substitutions" in sets, but to
make infinite substitutions in non-well-founded sets we need a
corresponding non-well-founded recursion principle.

  Of course, even if this is correct it doesn't follow that accepting
A and rejecting B makes any sense. Or in other words: it doesn't help
explain what mathematical objects, if any, you have in mind.
From: dowrie@cs.uq.oz.au (Susan Dowrie)
Newsgroups: sci.logic,comp.specification,comp.realtime,comp.lang.prolog
Subject: postdoc & hons positions - Generic Program Refinement Tool
Summary: Res.Fellow & Sen.Res.Asst. sought at SVRC, Brisbane from Jan 1993
Keywords: refinement, tools
Date: 13 Nov 92 04:32:47 GMT
Reply-To: dowrie@cs.uq.oz.au
Followup-To: sci.logic


Research Fellow and Senior Research Assistant

A Generic Program Refinement Tool

Software Verification Research Centre
Department of Computer Science
The University of Queensland

The Software Verification Research Centre is a Special Research Centre
of the Australian Research Council.  Its mission is to create improved
methods and tools, of industrial significance, for developing verified
software.

A new project to develop a generic program refinement tool
will begin in 1993. Two positions (both for one year initially)
are available commencing in January 1993 or as soon as possible
thereafter.

This project aims to develop a generic tool for the interactive
development of software, based on the refinement methodology
of Morgan, Back and Morris. The task involves:
  - extending existing approaches to support data refinement,
  - building the user interface on top of a generic language-based
    editor,
  - establishing close coupling with a proof system to 
    discharge obligations arising when applying refinement rules.

Research Fellow: applicants should have a PhD with a strong
interest in formal methods of software development. Experience
with the refinement calculus is highly desirable as is knowledge
relevant to the design of software support tools.

Senior Research Assistant: applicants should have a good Honours
degree in Computer Science or a cognate discipline such as discrete
mathematics or logic together with a significant background in
Computer Science. Familiarity with formal methods is highly desirable.

Salary ranges:
	Research Fellow: AU$41,000 -- AU$48,688
	Senior Research Assistant: AU$27,375 -- AU$34,034

For further information on either position, contact

Dr David Carrington (Ph: +61 7 365 3310 email: davec@cs.uq.oz.au)
Dr Ian Hayes        (Ph: +61 7 365 2386 email: ianh@cs.uq.oz.au)
Prof. Jim Welsh     (Ph: +61 7 365 2787 email: jim@cs.uq.oz.au)

Applications close Friday 4 December 1992. All applications should
nominate three referees with their addresses, email addresses, fax
and phone numbers. Applications should be addressed to:

	Professor Jim Welsh
	Software Verification Research Centre
	Department of Computer Science
	The University of Queensland
	St Lucia 4072
	AUSTRALIA

	(Fax: +61 7 365 1533)

Equal opportunity in employment is University policy.

Newsgroups: sci.logic,sci.philosophy.meta,sci.math
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Will a mathematician locked up in a little room be happy?
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 92 02:46:07 GMT

Gary Merrill writes:

>You can take a mathematician and lock him in his little office with just
>some writing materials and he will (a) be pretty happy, and (b) be able
>and willing to do anything of a mathematical nature.  Even a committed
>*theoretical* physicist will be very distressed under such circumstances
>since he has not way to determining whether his theories (however abstract)
>are *good* ones.

I hope you have not tried this experiment, because I don't think I, at
least, would stay happy for long in this little office.  Seriously, I
think your picture refers to an idealized "pure" mathematician who is
content to prove theorems without any interest in whether they are
useful for science.  I can cite my heroes -  Newton, Leibniz, Lagrange,
Laplace, Euler, Gauss, the Bernoulli crew, Fourier, Hilbert, von Neumann, Weyl,
etc. - as examples of mathematicians who DID care deeply about the
applicability of math.  Any thought experiments with mathematicians
should be run on some of this crowd.  And any theory of what mathematics
is that doesn't note where ideas like the Fourier transform came from is
wanting.  

You can say that these folks were sometimes acting qua theoretical
physicist, if you want to squirm out of this issue.  I don't think that
one can separate things out like that - e.g., Gauss did not say "today I
will do some mathematics and prove Gauss' law; tomorrow I will be a
theoretical physicist and apply this law to electricity."

Newsgroups: sci.logic
From: pratt@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Vaughan R. Pratt)
Subject: Re: Impredicativity - was: Russell's Paradox
Organization: Computer Science Department,  Stanford University.
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 17:45:27 GMT

In article <1992Nov5.164251.29649@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@garnet.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:
>You do not "weaken" FA to AFA; ZFC- + FA and ZFC- + AFA are both
>stronger than ZFC-, but neither is stronger than the other.

I guess this must be another of my misconceptions.  My general
impresssion was that AFA was automatically true under FA, by virtue of
the latter saying that only "unwound" graphs were permitted, and that
every chain on the unwinding had to terminate.  So what's an example FA
situation contradicting AFA?
-- 
Vaughan Pratt				There's no truth in logic, son.
Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.tech:3961 comp.ai.philosophy:6692 talk.philosophy.misc:2338 sci.lang:7919
From: Rick.Horowitz@launchpad.unc.edu (Rick Horowitz)
Newsgroups: news.announce.newsgroups,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.lang
Subject: RFD: sci.philosophy.language
Summary: Philosophy of language group needed; call for discussion
Keywords: RFD, philosophy of language, sci.philosophy.language
Date: 8 Nov 92 19:23:41 GMT
Organization: University of North Carolina Extended Bulletin Board Service

The following is an OFFICIAL request for discussion to create a
newsgroup called sci.philosophy.language.  (At least in my mind) It
supersedes a previous post I made requesting the creation of
talk.philosophy.language.  It has been pointed out to me that a
designation of sci might be more appropriate.
 
The proposal is to create a group with the following parameters:
 
Name of group:           sci.philosophy.language
Mode:                    unmoderated
 
Charter:
 
Inasmuch as there exist groups like sci.philosophy.tech,
talk.philosophy.misc, and comp.ai.philosophy which discuss various
issues not directly relating to philosophy of language, and inasmuch
as philosophy of language is an important and viable specialization
within philosophy, I propose the creation of a group for facilitating
discussion in this area.  Topics for discussion will include
(minimally) discussions of interest for philosophy of language,
philosophy of linguistics, theories of meaning and truth, reference,
pragmatics, speech act theory, intensional semantics, (to some extent)
language of thought, theories of names, demonstratives, works (past
and current) in such topics, etc.---all the issues that could be part
of a serious study of philosophy of language.

It is thought that the existence of such a group would stimulate more
discussion in the area of philosophy of language than (sporadically)
occurs in the other groups.  
 
I understand that the normal procedure calls for a discussion period
of some 30 days, after which a voting period would be initiated.  So
let's start the discussion.
 
Thanks.
 
 
Rick Horowitz     CSUF, Philosophy     rhorowit@mondrian.csufresno.edu
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   The word "politics" is derived from the word "poly", meaning
  "many", and the word "ticks", meaning "blood sucking parasites".


--
   The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
     North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
        Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
           internet:  laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80
From: mcrae@husc8.harvard.edu (Andrew McRae,   ,,)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: The "validity" of feminist philosophy
Date: 9 Nov 92 23:35:33 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Nov9.183535.17268
Reply-To: mcrae@husc8.harvard.edu
Originator: mcrae@husc8.harvard.edu

In article <BxG75H.33@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>, jwales@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (jimmy donal wales) writes:
>>Well, there are a lot of people working in feminist epistemology and
>>feminist ethics, so I think the onus is on you (at the beginning) to offer
>>some reason for thinking that what they're doing isn't worthwhile.
> 
> This is my first contribution to this particular thread, and I begin
> with a confession of ignorance.  I have no idea at all what 'feminist
> epistemology' would consist of.
>  [...]
> But feminist _epistemology_?  I honestly confess that I have no idea what
> such a field would study, or why.
> 
> So, in this case, I think that the onus is on those _doing_ this kind of
> work to explain to us what it is and why they think it is worthwhile.

Agreed 100% -- but there are two different things being confused here. I
agree that people working in a field bear, in general, the primary
responsibility for explaining what they're doing and why it's worthwhile.
But if someone comes up and tells me that some field in which lots of
people are working is actually a waste of time, or "invalid" (I wish I
knew what that meant) or whatever, then I think the onus is on that person
to give me some reason to believe them. There are all kinds of reasons
they might give (a good one would be "The people in this field have never
made any effort to explain exactly what it is they're doing and why it's
important") but if they don't give any good reason at all, I'm not going
to take them seriously.

Andrew.
-- 
Andrew McRae                       Internet: mcrae@husc.harvard.edu
                                     BITnet: mcrae@HUSC
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 04:17:58 GMT

In article <Bx3t8w.D75@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>,
chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:

>While it is true that there are many functional descriptions of a
>system, that does not mean that such descriptions are not objective.
>Whether a system instantiates a given functional organization is an
>objective matter, it seems to me (modulo Putnam/rock worries -- let's
>not get into those again).

The problem for me is that I don't know of an objective, coherent,
nontrivial notion of functional organization. To be nontrivial, it has
to be the case that two systems that are behaviorally identical can
have different functional organizations.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 10 Nov 92 14:33:38 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <1992Oct29.135623.11557@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough) writes:
>In article <1992Oct26.232936.119348@Cookie.secapl.com>,
>frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:

>>No, because it is not an *arbitrary* description here.  If I abstract
>>from the atmosphere of a planet to a description in terms of ideal
>>gases, I don't get an arbitrary such description; my choice of
>>abstraction forces a single description on me.
>
>Exactly. Your choice of abstraction produces a unique description, but
>there is more than one possible abstraction. What I am denying is that
>there is a unique, objective abstraction operator that can tell me the
>functional organization of a physical system (as opposed to a formal
>system such as a program).

It's true that there is more than one such operator, but that 
doesn't mean we can't find the right one for a given purpose.

>I will agree that *given* an abstraction function, and *given* a
>decomposition of a system into parts, then it may be possible to say,
>objectively, whether the system with that decomposition and that
>abstraction function has a certain functional organization.  However,
>the choice of abstraction function and decomposition are not
>objective, and can be done in more than one way.

The choice can be done in more than one way, but so what?

What do you mean by saying it's not objective?

-- jd
Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.tech:4035 sci.physics:18641 sci.skeptic:19340