HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Subject: Re: Numbers and sets
Organization: Boise State University
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 18:12:14 GMT

In article <BzzHDI.2Bv@umassd.edu> pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU writes:
>In article <1992Dec28.155555.21505@guinness.idbsu.edu>, holmes@opal.idbsu.edu 
>(Randall Holmes) writes:
>>In article <Bzsrvt.167@umassd.edu> pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU writes:
>>>    Is there a relationship between sets and Plato's Forms?
>
>Plato's Forms were ideal exemplars of
>>mundane objects; sets do not have this character (the set of all
>>natural numbers is not a perfect natural number).  
>
>    Perhaps I should have asked about Kantian, subjective forms.

Do you actually read other people's postings, or do you just look for
key words and consult Rand to find out what we are supposed to be
saying?  You should know very well that I do not consider formal
objects to be subjective in any way, shape or form.

 I am starting 
>"Plato, Kant and Aristotle in Math" by Glenn Marcus (2nd Renaissance Books,
>1991, audio) and should have some wisdom on math soon.

You won't get wisdom on math by reading any of those gentlemen.  Try
Bertrand Russell (OK, Mikhail, I won't ennoble him anachronistically).
I'd agree with you about his politics, but he's good on math _and_ a
good writer.  There are other people to read, of course.

>    Marcus says scientists (excepting computer scientists w/info theory) use
>only pre-20th century math and quotes a leading mathematician on the 
>impracticality of math. Comments?

This is not true for scientists in general, and the computer
scientists in particular are using a lot more 20th century math than
information theory; the theory of types, for example, is applied in
CS.


>================================================================================
>	"In that world, you'll be able to rise in the morning with the spirit
>you had known in your childhood: that spirit of eagerness, adventure and cer-
>tainty which comes from dealing with a rational universe."

Since the universe (as opposed to its loal inhabitants) is already
rational, you should already be able to do this, no?  (At least, if
you have a strong stomach).

>                                                              AYN RAND
>================================================================================
>Stephen Grossman <PMSC13SG@UMASS.EDU>
>================================================================================


-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu
Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.tech:4668 sci.logic:2521
From: PL436000@brownvm.brown.edu (Jamie)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
Subject: Re: No Reification Here
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 12:08:49 EST
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: brownvm.brown.edu
News-Software: BNN via BNN_POST v1.0 beta

Oh. I get it.

But stratification works fine in any case (well, I don't mean it has no
costs, but it does work).
Thus, if you don't reify the predicate, you need to stratify. And if you
do reify the predicate, you need to stratify. Or perhaps there is some
other strategy. But so far, it looks as though all the strategies work
equally for reified and unreified predicates.

I'm not sure I agree, by the way, that a predicate is meaningful if and
only if it expresses a property.

I can think of a couple of types of example. For one, one might agree
that a predicate is meaningful even though one thinks it should be
paraphrased out in a good, logical language. I suppose "yummy" might be
like that.

For another, I suspect that there are some predicates that are
indexicals. "Occurred yesterday" might be such a predicate. (I believe
that it is.) Of course, I would agree that on any occasion of use,
"occurred yesterday" DOES express a property. So perhaps that isn't a
counterexample at all. But it expresses different properties on
different occasions.

Hm. Those are the only kinds of examples I can think of.
(And it's possible that the "expressivist" predicates, like
"yummy," are best thought of as indexicals, too....)

      Jamie
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
From: rmk4@ellis.uchicago.edu (Robert Knippen)
Subject: Re: Quantifiers
Reply-To: rmk4@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 19:13:12 GMT

In article <1992Dec30.230419.4341@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:

>
>Restricted quantifiers, in ZFC or NF, are nothing more than formulae
>with one free variable; (for all x in range Q)(P) means nothing more
>than (for _all_ x)(if "Q holds of x" then P).  There is no other way
>of introducing restricted quantifiers in either theory.
>
I'm not at all interested in the points being disputed in this thread, but 
as an advocate of restricted quantification, I have to point out that this 
is dead wrong, unless I am confused about the nature of ZFC and NF.

The point of restricted quantification, as I see it, is to avoid the
nutty consequences that arise from using "if".  One such nutty consequence
is giving clear truth conditions in cases where Q holds of nothing. With
restricted quantification, the semantics returns "tilt" when Q is true
of nothing:(All: Qx)(Px) is not evaluable when Qx does not hold of any x, 
because no x get plugged into P.  With unrestricted quantification, 
the proposition is true.  These kinds of cases, which might be summed up
as "results which do not seem consistent with natural language," multiply
on further investigation.  Even if I'm wrong about this, it is still wrong 
say that the two are equivalent.  Unrestricted quantification forces you
to split up the domain during evaluation, using your system.  Restricted 
quantification allows you to stipulate a subpart of the domain, in which
to evaluate a given proposition.  Further, restricted quantification 
makes formulae more closely mirror natural language

If this has been discussed early in the thread, just forgive me, don't 
bother flaming.  I'm aware that I don't really know what's going on in
the thread.

Bob

r-knippen@uchicago.edu


Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.tech:4634 sci.logic:2489
From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
Subject: Re: No Reification Here
Date: 29 Dec 92 19:08:58 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Dec29.140859.18884
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <1hq0mhINNpda@cat.cis.Brown.EDU> 
PL436000@brownvm.brown.edu (Jamie) writes:


>Oh. I get it.

Good.

>But stratification works fine in any case (well, I don't mean it has no
>costs, but it does work).

Hey, 115 grains of jacketed hollowpoint at 1365 feet per second works
fine against a headache; however I would advise other techniques, in
the absence of an independent motivation.

>Thus, if you don't reify the predicate, you need to stratify. And if you
>do reify the predicate, you need to stratify. Or perhaps there is some
>other strategy. But so far, it looks as though all the strategies work
>equally for reified and unreified predicates.

Well, the difference is, if you reify the predicates, you stratify the
properties.  This is known as type theory.  On the other hand, if you
do not reify predicates, you stratify the syntax.  This is known as
vacuous word games, excuse me, the New Foundations.

>I'm not sure I agree, by the way, that a predicate is meaningful if and
>only if it expresses a property.

Well, make up your mind then.

>I can think of a couple of types of example. For one, one might agree
>that a predicate is meaningful even though one thinks it should be
>paraphrased out in a good, logical language. I suppose "yummy" might be
>like that.

Why would "paraphrasing out" eliminate the expression of any property?

>For another, I suspect that there are some predicates that are
>indexicals. "Occurred yesterday" might be such a predicate. (I believe
>that it is.) Of course, I would agree that on any occasion of use,

with the sole exception of the first day of creation,

>"occurred yesterday" DOES express a property. So perhaps that isn't a
>counterexample at all. But it expresses different properties on
>different occasions.

So what?

>Hm. Those are the only kinds of examples I can think of.
>(And it's possible that the "expressivist" predicates, like
>"yummy," are best thought of as indexicals, too....)

Perhaps all words are best thought of as indexicals; this, after all,
is one lesson of pragmatics.  However, I fail to see in what way this
view would vitiate my claim that predicates are meaningful, iff they
express a property.

>      Jamie

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."
Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.tech:4670 sci.logic:2523
From: PL436000@brownvm.brown.edu (Jamie)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
Subject: Re: No Reification Here
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 17:29:58 EST
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: brownvm.brown.edu
News-Software: BNN via BNN_POST v1.0 beta

>From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)

MZ:
>Is anybody still taking emotivism seriously?

Yes, someone is.

>J:
>>As well you know, Simon Blackburn thinks that MANY predicates
>>should be paraphrased out that way. He thinks these predicates
>>express NO property, and yet that they are meaningful.
>
>Is anybody still taking Simon Blackburn seriously?

Well, now THAT I'm not sure about. I suspect so.

>J:
>>Even if you hate Blackburn, there are more respectable examples.
>>De Finetti was an expressivist about probability predicates, for
>>example. Allan Gibbard has a pretty good expressivist theory of
>>normative judgments.
>
>It remains to be shown that expressivism, as exemplified above, is
>bereft of an ontology of properties.

I didn't say, of course, that expressivism is bereft of an ontology
of properties. Expressivists may be quite happy with some properties,
but wish to rid their ontology of others.

I will fill in a couple of the examples now.

Blackburn claims that "is good" expresses no property, but that
it is nevertheless meaningful, because it has a function other
than expressing a property. Its function is to express an
attitude ("express" in this sentence is meant in a different
sense from that of "expresses a property").
(He says roughly the same thing about "causes" and "is necessary.")

De Finetti believed that the predicate "Has probability .5"
expressed no property, but that it was nevertheless meaningful
in that it expressed the speaker's degree of belief. (Again,
"expressed" in the second sense. Perhaps I will try to avoid
this locution, but it's not easy since the name of the view
is "expressivism.")

>J:
>>I suppose what I was thinking was that there is no property of
>>Yesterday Occurrence. Nevertheless, "Occurred yesterday" does
>>express a property on each occasion of utterance.
>
>Does not do anything for your claim then, does it?

Which claim?

>J:
>>Why don't you think that's a counterexample? Is it,
>>(a) because Expressivism is false,
>>(b) because a predicate with an Expressivist analysis is meaningless,
>>(c) because a predicate with an Expressivist analysis nonetheless
>>    expresses a property,
>>
>>or something else?
>
>At the moment, I do not quite know what it is.

I would now like to add another possibility,

(d) because the things that look like predicates are not,
according to an Expressivist analysis, really predicates at all.

Jamie
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
From: holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Subject: Re: No Reification Here
Organization: Boise State University
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 18:53:44 GMT

In article <1992Dec29.140859.18884@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>In article <1hq0mhINNpda@cat.cis.Brown.EDU> 
>PL436000@brownvm.brown.edu (Jamie) writes:
>
>
>>Oh. I get it.
>
>Good.
>
>>But stratification works fine in any case (well, I don't mean it has no
>>costs, but it does work).
>
>Hey, 115 grains of jacketed hollowpoint at 1365 feet per second works
>fine against a headache; however I would advise other techniques, in
>the absence of an independent motivation.

So would I, actually.  It is possible to use stratification to avert
semantic paradoxes by making quotation a type-raising operation; it is
only needed if one wants a language with names for all objects in NFU.
If one uses more modest linguistic machinery, one uses the same
solutions to semantic paradoxes as in the usual set theory.

>>Thus, if you don't reify the predicate, you need to stratify. And if you
>>do reify the predicate, you need to stratify. Or perhaps there is some
>>other strategy. But so far, it looks as though all the strategies work
>>equally for reified and unreified predicates.

This is confused.  Stratification is a tactic for determining which
predicates can be reified; it is ony relevant if one has the project
of reifying at least some predicates in mind.  "Limitation of size" is
another such tactic.  Predicates can _always_ be "reified" in the
sense of being quoted; paradoxes along this line have different sorts
of solutions.

[Spiteful remarks about the One True Set Theory from Zeleny omitted]

>
>>I'm not sure I agree, by the way, that a predicate is meaningful if and
>>only if it expresses a property.

[discussion of indexicals omitted]

>
>Perhaps all words are best thought of as indexicals; this, after all,
>is one lesson of pragmatics.  However, I fail to see in what way this
>view would vitiate my claim that predicates are meaningful, iff they
>express a property.

It depends on what you mean by "meaningful".  "is an element of
itself" is a meaningful predicate in the sense that ascribing it to
any object (construe this as a syntactical operation!) yields a
meaningful sentence.  I don't think that any predicate is "meaningful"
in the sense of referring to something _qua_ predicate; verbs are not
nouns.  Some predicates have extensions which can have meaningful
names.

>
>>      Jamie
>
>cordially,
>mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
>"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."



-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
From: feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld)
Subject: Re: No Reification Here
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 21:23:14 GMT

Well -- this sort of thinking tends to commit you to some sort of
Aristotelian realism, if not worse, and some of us would like to keep
nominalism as a live option; recall your own earlier (possibly
disdainful?) reference to "tropes".

So, properties if necessary, but not necessarily properties, as our
great, mad, former (and now possibly dead) Prime Minister might have
put it.
-- 
Michael Feld                  | E-mail: <feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Dept. of Philosophy           | FAX: (204) 261-0021
University of Manitoba        | Voice: (204) 474-9136
Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2M8, Canada
From: PL436000@brownvm.brown.edu (Jamie)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: That which hurts
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 10:54:41 EST
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: brownvm.brown.edu
News-Software: BNN via BNN_POST v1.0 beta

In article <Bztz5L.DMM@casper.cs.uct.ac.za>, nhorne@casper.cs.uct.ac.za (N E
Horne) said:

>Somewhere along the "Truth" thread, Jamie writes:
>
>
>" Consider the sentence which would come first on an alphabetized
>  list of 100-word sentences of English.
>
>  It is either a true sentence of English or a false one. No one has
>  ever interpreted it (I'll wager). With the possible exception of
>  one of us, no one ever will. "
>
>That something's amiss becomes clear when you consider that in the event of
your
>sentence being an imperative (the requirement of alphabetic order may yield
>something like "Abandon aardvarks!" at the top of your list) or a question
>the sentence is neither true nor false.

Quite so. I should have said, "indicative sentences."

>In fact, it is widely held that propositions, as opposed to sentences, are the
>bearers of truth value.

In fact, it is not.
In fact, it is widely held that propositions, *in addition to sentences*,
are the bearers of truth values.

Many people, including theorists, do not like propositions at all.
I do. But in the spirit of my ontological liberalism, I try to
make as many accomodations for the propositional skeptics as I can.
This liberalism stood me well in a brief conversation (resulting
from one of my postings to this news group) with a Wittgensteinian,
about propositions unexpressable in English.

Even so, I take your point, approximately.

>The process of interpretaion involves nothing less
>than establishing a correspondence between sentences and statements (which
>also have no truth value) and if possible (and this is not possible in the
>cases mentioned above) between statements and propositions.

Again, I agree with the spirit.
I would not call interpretation a "process." There need be no literal
process of interpretation in order for a sentence to be interpreted.
An interpretation (thought of as a mathematical function) once
stipulated, no one actually has to apply it. Thus, we may think
of the alphabetically first 100-word INDICATIVE (nb my concession)
sentence of English as interpreted, and as being true or false,
even though there has never been any intepretive process for it.

>Consider also what truth value you would care to assign to ambiguous
sentences.

Again, I take the point.

I am inclined to think of ambiguous sentences along the lines of
indexical sentences. Is that sufficient?

Jamie

>Neil Horne
>Cape Town
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
From: holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Subject: Re: No Reification Here
Organization: Boise State University
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 18:35:01 GMT

In article <1992Dec28.203018.18876@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>In article <1hntpkINNnp8@cat.cis.Brown.EDU> 
>PL436000@brownvm.brown.edu (Jamie) writes:
>
>>But, I don't understand how using unreified predicates instead of
>>objects helps avoid set theoretic paradoxes. Grelling's paradox
>>uses only a predicate, and (unless I'm very confused) does not
>>require reification.
>
>You are very confused.  If Grelling's paradox is regarded as purely
>syntactical, then it is unproblematic on a Quinian view that requires
>stratification (as spurious as such a requirement might be); if, on
>the other hand, it is regarded as semantical, then the contradiction
>depends on the assumption that the predicate "...is heterological"
>expresses a _bona fide_ property.

Thanks, Mikhail, for identifying the paradox!  I don't see the
relevance of stratification to the syntactical version of Grelling's
paradox; unless you are referring to my own recent proposal vis-a-vis
stratification and semantic paradoxes?  But the obvious interpretation
involves _properties_, which are reified predicates, as Mikhail points
out.

>
>>Jamie
>
>cordially,
>mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
>"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."


-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu
Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.tech:4645 sci.math:17505
From: PL436000@brownvm.brown.edu (Jamie)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.math
Subject: Those funny secret old words
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 10:20:57 EST
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: brownvm.brown.edu
News-Software: BNN via BNN_POST v1.0 beta

>From: pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU (Stephen Grossman)

>    SG         Zeleny has perfected the argumentum ad loudmouth.

Why, yes, he has, actually! I was going to commend him for that myself,
but he has been too modest to accept my commendations in the past.

I wonder if Grossman actually knows what "ad" means, or if he
only *mistakenly* called himself a loudmouth?

>I sympathize
>with the burden of studying under Nozick but you should really make some sort
>effort at evidence.

I suspect Zeleny will prefer not to answer, but I would personally
be quite amazed if he has in fact studied under Nozick. It would
rock my worldview.

> No, I think that your metaphysical confusion exists as much as Ayn
>Rand's wisdom.

Again, I must concur with Grossman's assessment.

>To be rather academic let us note the rather large description
>of non-noumnal items in _The Critique of Pure Wisdom_.

Oh, let's not. I had enough trouble with the other three Critiques.

>mathematician Hardy's claim that math is useless. After my ongoing study of
>the Objectivist philosophy of math is complete I shall inform the hoi polloi.

We polloi are holding our breath.
("The hoi polloi" is redundant.)

Jamie
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Subject: Re: A note on Modal Logic that has nothing to do with Ikky Sex
Organization: Boise State University
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 20:07:46 GMT

An additional comment:

One expects trouble with Tarski's paradox when expressing the model
theory of ZFC inside ZFC itself, of course.  One can build a language
inside ZFC which contains constants for all the objects of ZFC, but
one cannot define satisfaction, and so truth, for sentences of this
language.  One can, of course, add truth for sentences of this
language as a primitive notion (or reference for terms of this
language) and state the necessary axioms for it, but this notion of
truth will not be adequate in turn for sentences of the language
augmented with the truth predicate.  But there is no problem with
defining truth in any given _model_ of ZFC (such models are sets), so
this is not really a limitation on the model theory of ZFC in ZFC; it
reflects the fact that the intended interpretation of ZFC is not the
theory of a model of ZFC.


-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu
Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.tech:4638 sci.logic:2495
From: Rick.Horowitz@launchpad.unc.edu (Rick Horowitz)
Subject: TEST-Don't waste your time
Organization: University of North Carolina Extended Bulletin Board Service
Distribution: usa
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 07:58:41 GMT

To anyone who is reading this, even though I warned folks it was a test:

I'm checking to see that my postings go through to these groups, because
I posted the call for votes for sci.philosophy.language and it has yet
to show up anywhere! 

rhorowit@mondrian.csufresno.edu

--
   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
Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.tech:4628 sci.math:17471