HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: amnell@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Is There a Set of All Truths?
Date: 19 Aug 92 17:27:35 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

In article <1992Aug19.162800.25005@sics.se> torkel@sics.se 
(Torkel Franzen) writes:

>In article <1992Aug19.150044.28450@klaava.Helsinki.FI> amnell@klaava.Helsinki.
>FI (Marko Amnell) writes:
>
>   >You'll recall that I don't shy away from unorthodoxy.  To me
>   >a truth without proof is no truth at all (I've always thought that
>   >Brouwer had a point).  Hence my 'noumenal proofs' for 'noumenal truths'.
>
>  Yes, but does this have anything to do with realism?

Call it what you like.  I only care about the ideas not the label.

>   >What realism does
>   >require, I think, is an alethic totality of all truths (preferably
>   >propositions, but all possible statements --in every possible language--
>   >might also do the trick).
>
>  Well, that's what I asked you about. So if we forget about the irrelevant
>Dummett stuff, why, according to you, does realism require a "totality of
>all truths"?

If there is no set of all truths and we think of the universe as the
physical manifestation of a set-theoretical possible world (ie. a set of
true propositions such that no proposition may be added to it without
precipitating a contradiction) then there is no universe as a totality;
the universe is, as Grim says, somehow incomplete or open.  Metaphysical
realism seems to include the thesis that the universe is complete and
whole -- in the sense of ,say, the opening lines of the _Tractatus_ 
"The world is all that is the case."  My distinction between statements
and propositions highlights the Kantian division of the world into a
phenomenal realm (experienced via the categories of thought, expressed
in language) and the noumenal realm (lying beyond the grasp of our
brains, perhaps to be encroached in the future by scientific progress).
If there is no set of all true propositions then there exists only the
phenomenal realm (what Stephan Korner calls _immanent metaphysics_) and
there is nothing beyond (what Korner calls _transcendent metaphysics_).

Marko Amnell
From: skataria@thunder.LakeheadU.Ca (skataria)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: WHAT IS LOVE?
Date: 18 Aug 1992 16:43:13 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ont., Canada


WHAT IS LOVE? 
Can somebody give me a convincing answer?
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
From: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
Subject: Re: Philosophical Influence 
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
	<1992Aug14.021754.27883@a.cs.okstate.edu>
	<1992Aug14.124501.14732@husc3.harvard.edu>
	<1992Aug18.004116.24086@panix.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 07:46:26 GMT

In article <1992Aug18.004116.24086@panix.com> davidc@panix.com 
(David B. Chorlian) writes:

   >Both Husserl and Wittgenstein
   >were interested in logic and mathematics at the beginning of their
   >philosophical careers, 

  Wittgenstein wrote and lectured a lot more on the philosophy of
logic and mathematics in his later period, well into the forties, than
he did in the Tractatus days.

   >In doing this they approached their work with the same
   >degree of rigor as they had brought to their studies of formal
   >logic.

  An ambiguous comment. Just what degree of rigor would you ascribe
to Wittgenstein's studies of formal logic?

Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
From: hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark Peterson)
Subject: Re: Philosophical Influence & Goedel
Originator: hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
Reply-To: hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
Organization: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 15:44:26 GMT

From article <1992Aug12.190132.15285@javelin.sim.es.com>, by biesel@javelin.sim.es.com (Heiner Biesel):
> zeleny@husc8.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
> 
>>In article <MARTINC.92Aug11215203@grover.cs.unc.edu>
>>martinc@grover.cs.unc.edu (Charles R. Martin) writes:
> 
>>CRM:
>>>I dunno, MZ... the overwhelming importance of Goedel-Roesser and via
>>>them Turing on philosophy I think would be hard to overestimate.  (I
>>>agree with you about Heidegger et al -- I suspect that by 2092 they'll
>>>be about as well known as the Thomists and neo-Platonists, but no longer
>>>an active influence.) 
> 
>>Let me begin that I am in no way interested in belittling the importance of
>>the incompleteness results, to which you are alluding.  However, it is
>>quite clear to me that their philosophical influence is far inferior to

[...]

etc....


This got me to thinking...  I would have said Nietzsche was the major
philosopher of the 20th century.  Or maybe Henry Ford.

But more to the point....

It's interesting to remember that back around, oh, 1795 to maybe 1817,
Fichte was thought to be considerably more important than Kant and for
a while there Immanuel was all but forgotten.  I just *know* that more
of you have read Science of Knowledge than Critique of Pure Reason....;-)

In any case, this is what I think of every time I hear (or see, I
guess) these discussions.  It would be interesting if, in 2092, it was
Jacques Ellul and Levinas that are remembered from the 20th century.
Or one of y'all... hmm.



hiho
-- 
mark ce peterson   | uw-washington county  | hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu 
dept of philosophy | west bend, wi.  53095 | (414) 335-5200        

     The shorter the tether, the sooner the goat starves.
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
From: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
Subject: Re: Is There a Set of All Truths?
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
	<1992Aug19.115545.17876@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
	<1992Aug19.132250.18826@sics.se>
	<1992Aug19.150044.28450@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 16:28:00 GMT

In article <1992Aug19.150044.28450@klaava.Helsinki.FI> amnell@klaava.Helsinki.
FI (Marko Amnell) writes:

   >You'll recall that I don't shy away from unorthodoxy.  To me
   >a truth without proof is no truth at all (I've always thought that
   >Brouwer had a point).  Hence my 'noumenal proofs' for 'noumenal truths'.

  Yes, but does this have anything to do with realism?

   >What realism does
   >require, I think, is an alethic totality of all truths (preferably
   >propositions, but all possible statements --in every possible language--
   >might also do the trick).

  Well, that's what I asked you about. So if we forget about the irrelevant
Dummett stuff, why, according to you, does realism require a "totality of
all truths"?
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Subject: Re: Does evil imply error?
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 01:45:09 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix & Internet, NYC

zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

>BS:
>>You are saying that a person who does evil should be assumed to not
>>know what is good?
>
>[ . . . ] I sometimes wonder about the assumption you mention.  Do you
>think it may be justified?

It's an interesting question, in a way.  If (1) "belief" in a
proposition implies a disposition to act as if the proposition were
true, and (2) "goodness" is a sufficient motive for acting, then belief
that X is good does seem inconsistent with doing ~X.  So rejecting the
assumption seems to require us to reject either (1) or (2). 

Most people, I think, are inclined to say that (2) is only sometimes
true, and that even though the goodness of an action is a motive for
doing it, other motives sometimes prevail.  That line of thought leads
to difficulties, though -- for example, if the goodness of an action
motivates us to do it, and its difficulty motivates us not to do it, on
what grounds do we decide whether to do it or not?  Not, it seems, on
moral grounds (grounds of good and evil), because the issue is whether
to act on moral grounds.  But if the question is decided on non-moral
grounds, it seems that the decision to act morally even though it's
difficult is not a moral decision.

You can avoid these problems, and other problems raised by the notion
of free will, by assuming that people always do what appears good to
them.  But if that's true, then whatever people know to be good they
will invariably do and evil actions will always be explicable by the
ignorance of the actor.

Of course, you can also assume that talk about "good" and "evil" is a
lot of hogwash, but it seems to me that such an assumption makes it
rather difficult to discuss human action at all.  It's all very
puzzling, for me at any rate.

>"Nous donnons la mort, nous saurons la subir."

Az zabaan-e-feransawi besyaar khasta shodeim, wala.  Farsi cetor?
-- 
    Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
From: cmenzel@tamsun.tamu.edu (Christopher P Menzel         )
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Is There a Set of All Truths?
Date: 19 Aug 92 20:38:20 GMT
Article-I.D.: tamsun.1992Aug19.203820.20586
Organization: Texas A&M University, College Station

In article <1992Aug19.094252.7977@klaava.Helsinki.FI> amnell@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell) writes:
>In article <1992Aug19.080257.4921@sics.se> 
>torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Aug18.214302.1721@klaava.Helsinki.FI> amnell@klaava.Helsinki.
>>FI (Marko Amnell) writes:
>>
>>   >On a realist reading of mathematical truth, a proposition such as
>>   >Fermat's Last Theorem is either true or false.  What I suggest is 
>>   >that even if a proof one way or the other is never found, it still
>>   >exists (this is what I called a 'noumenal truth' in my note).
>>
>TF:
>>  What exists?
>
>The proof of FLT (in the _nous_ of God, see below).
>
>>
>TF:
>>  As for realism and a "set of all truths", it is quite obscure what
>>connection you have in mind. Could you set this out more informatively?
>
>I quote Michael Dummett in _The Logical Basis of Metaphysics_ (pp.348f):
>  
>  Can a theist resist the realist's argument?  When we approach the 
>  issue from the side of metaphysics, theism seems a natural ally of
>  realism.  For reality must be as God apprehends it; and his knowledge
>  of it guarantees that it is as it is, independently of how it appears
>  to us or of whether we know it or not...
>
>  ...God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, but that seems beside the
>  point; we are concerned not with divine concepts but with God's
>  knowledge of truths involving human concepts, truths in which there
>  is no indefiniteness since the concept of a prime number is quite
>  definite, being fixed by a decision procedure.  Since primality is
>  decidable, the statement that any particular number is prime must be
>  determinately either true or false, since the decision procedure, if
>  applied to that number, would have a determinate outcome...  But if
>  God knows everything, he must know, of every natural number, whether
>  or not it is prime:  must he not therefore know whether there is a
>  largest prime pair?
>
>I hope this also answers Chris Menzel's query, but I will be happy to
>elaborate if something is not clear.

I remain nonplussed.  As far as I can see, the only that follows from
the view Dummett is suggesting here (only to refute, I suspect) is
that all the natural numbers have to exist, all propositions about
them have to have a definite truth value, etc.  Nothing whatever
follows about the existence of a *set* of all numbers, or a set of all
truths.  Dummett doesn't even bring sets into the picture.  What do
you see that I don't?

--Chris Menzel
From: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
Subject: Re: Philosophical Influence & Goedel
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
	<1992Aug13.082047.23332@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
	<1992Aug13.112211.3386@sics.se>
	<1992Aug13.143151.11881@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 15:58:37 GMT

In article <1992Aug13.143151.11881@klaava.Helsinki.FI> amnell@klaava.Helsinki
.FI (Marko Amnell) writes:

   >But let's not continue with this "who's the greatest of them all"
   >silliness further (I already regret joining the fray).

  I care nothing about "greatest of them all" blather. I'm just curious.
What philosophical work, ideas, conclusions, theories, whatever, of Ramsey's
prompt you to regard him as the greatest philosopher of the century? Or,
if you like, forget about the greatest philosopher bit, and let's just
consider Ramsey.
From: ag@sics.se (Anders G|ransson)
Subject: Re: Wittgensteins Logic Contributions
Organization: GRAMMA
	<1992Aug22.102046.4759@sics.se>
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 16:00:48 GMT

>>>>> In article <1992Aug22.102046.4759@sics.se>, torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen) writes:

torkel> In article <9208211931.AA14264@lenny.kaman.com> rob@KAMAN.COM (Rob Vienneau) writes:



   >Are not the following important contributions from the Tractatus?

torkel> Wittgenstein's remarks about truth tables and tautologies were no doubt
torkel>the result of original thinking, but they don't appear to have been very
torkel> significant in the history of logic.
......  (text omitted)


Doesn't W comment on this matter in the "W lectures on
the foundations of mathematics" (ed. Diamond)? I don't have the
book here but I recall that W says that Frege invented the truth tables but
that he used them for actually defining the logical constants. 
 
--


        Dawn points, and another day
      Prepares for heat and silence.

      
      (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets)
From: Christopher.Carne@brunel.ac.uk (Christopher J Carne)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Heidegger, Hitler, Racism and logic.
Date: 18 Aug 92 14:45:31 GMT
Organization: Brunel University, West London, UK

I'm a bit hesitant to invoke a Derridean response to this subject given that
his stuff on Paul de Man's role as a Nazi collaborator has been somewhat
unsatisfactory, but it seems to me that what Derrida has to say about
Nietzsche and Nazism might be enlightening.

The subtitle of the Derridean text 'Otobiographies' is 'l'ensiegnement
de Nietzsche et la politique du nom propre' (Nietzsche's teaching
and the politics of the proper name) and it is the relationship 
between the signiture of the author and the possible readings of a text.
As Derrida points out signitures do not ensure the passage of an author's
'true' intentions to those who would interpret and produce canonical
readings of texts. In the case of Nietszche there was a flagrant 
appropriation by the Nazis . The crucial question that Derrida askes is
what was it about Nietzsche's writings that allowed his work to become 
so closely allied with Nazism. It is not enough to exonerate a writer
(or in Heidegger's case to arraign him) by driving a wedge between 
'authorial intentions and the after-effects of writing'.  This is not to
say that there Nietzsche was a latent nazi but rather we should think
of 'mimetic perversion', of a reading that can seize upon the text's
various resouces and bend them to its own purposes. 

Derrida's intention in this paper is to map out how decouncstruction
s an ethical force able to counter (or at least to document) the
ways in which (mis)readings of texts are involved in establishing
power calims.

So where does all this get us with Heidegger? Well, if nothing else it
suggests that the argument must be more than the:

1. Heidegger's name guarantees readings.
   Heidegger was a Nazi.
   All readings of Heidegger then involve the reinforcement of
   Nazi ideology.

2. Heidegger's name does not gaurantee menaings
   Heidegger was (or at least might have been occassionally) a Nazi.
   OUr readings of Heidegger have no connection with his Nazism.

It seems to me that these positions are held fpr the purpose of 
legitimising or delitimising readings of Heidegger and that responsibility
must be taken for either reading. Of course this statement goes for my
readings of Derrida, Heidegger and the net postings in this thread. In any case
we should reject the idea that any reading of Heidegger is innocent. It is
not the ethics of Heidegger the man that are at stake, but the ethics of
the Heideggerian texts, the ethics of our reading of that texts and the
ethics of how we account for our readings.  


Chris Carne,
Centre for Research into Innovation, Culture and Technology [CRICT],
Brunel University,
Uxbridge [Most certainly not to be confused with *Oxbridge*]
Middx.
UK
From: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
Subject: Re: Is There a Set of All Truths?
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
	<1992Aug19.094252.7977@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
	<1992Aug19.102530.12000@sics.se>
	<1992Aug19.115545.17876@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 13:22:50 GMT

In article <1992Aug19.115545.17876@klaava.Helsinki.FI> amnell@klaava.Helsinki.
FI (Marko Amnell) writes:

   >I take it we agree that the sign of a true statement in mathematics is
   >the existence of a proof.

  From a realistic point of view there is no apparent reason at all why every
true mathematical statement must have a proof.

   >I think Dummett quite explicitly says that metaphysical realism requires
   >that there be a collection of all true propositions ("[God's] knowledge
   >[of all truths]...guarantees that [reality] is as it is, independently
   >of whether we know it or not").

  What God's knowledge guarantees, for those who invoke God's knowledge,
is one matter. But why should realism imply that there is such a thing
as "God's knowledge"?
From: zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Does evil imply error?
Date: 17 Aug 92 08:52:19 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Aug17.045220.14806
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <BILL.92Aug16190021@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu>
bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs) writes:

>zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

MZ:
>> Now, clearly an ethics is never deducible from logic alone; nor
>> is Heidegger's doctrine in any way limited to the same.  In this
>> sense, it is indeed important to note the moral failings of its
>> creator, for these failings throw light on what may be
>> interpreted either as a fundamental gap between theory and
>> praxis, very likely due to an essential feature of the former, or
>> as prima facie evidence of its internal inconsistency, which
>> brings us back into the provenance of logic, or, finally, as a
>> sign of a fatal defect in its basic assumptions.  In no case does
>> the philosopher escape unscathed by the ramifications of his
>> personal scrofulousness. 

BS:
>You are saying that a person who does evil should be assumed to not
>know what is good?

No, Bill, I am not that much of a Platonist.  Check out the first
alternative proposed above.  However, I sometimes wonder about the
assumption you mention.  Do you think it may be justified?

>	-- Bill

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Nous donnons la mort, nous saurons la subir."
From: amnell@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Is There a Set of All Truths?
Date: 19 Aug 92 09:42:52 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

In article <1992Aug19.080257.4921@sics.se> 
torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen) writes:

>In article <1992Aug18.214302.1721@klaava.Helsinki.FI> amnell@klaava.Helsinki.
>FI (Marko Amnell) writes:
>
>   >On a realist reading of mathematical truth, a proposition such as
>   >Fermat's Last Theorem is either true or false.  What I suggest is 
>   >that even if a proof one way or the other is never found, it still
>   >exists (this is what I called a 'noumenal truth' in my note).
>
TF:
>  What exists?

The proof of FLT (in the _nous_ of God, see below).

>
TF:
>  As for realism and a "set of all truths", it is quite obscure what
>connection you have in mind. Could you set this out more informatively?

I quote Michael Dummett in _The Logical Basis of Metaphysics_ (pp.348f):
  
  Can a theist resist the realist's argument?  When we approach the 
  issue from the side of metaphysics, theism seems a natural ally of
  realism.  For reality must be as God apprehends it; and his knowledge
  of it guarantees that it is as it is, independently of how it appears
  to us or of whether we know it or not...

  ...God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, but that seems beside the
  point; we are concerned not with divine concepts but with God's
  knowledge of truths involving human concepts, truths in which there
  is no indefiniteness since the concept of a prime number is quite
  definite, being fixed by a decision procedure.  Since primality is
  decidable, the statement that any particular number is prime must be
  determinately either true or false, since the decision procedure, if
  applied to that number, would have a determinate outcome...  But if
  God knows everything, he must know, of every natural number, whether
  or not it is prime:  must he not therefore know whether there is a
  largest prime pair?


I hope this also answers Chris Menzel's query, but I will be happy to
elaborate if something is not clear.

Marko Amnell
Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.meta:1541 sci.logic:1267
From: daniel@vtserf.cc.vt.edu (Daniel Kranowski)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Obj, Exist
Date: 20 Aug 92 17:43:24 GMT
Organization: Virginia Tech (VPI & SU)

In article <1992Aug19.204557.7254@cis.umassd.edu>, pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU (Stephen Grossman) writes:
> 	Recalling that all exists equally, relativism is not a meta. or episte.
> privileged limit, thing, or context. It all exists, the things you consider
> and the things you don't want to consider. 

     I think I finally am beginning to grasp the root of objectivism as
it has been described: a combination of two fundamentally different
things into one mistaken unity.  Stephen Grossman and/or Ayn Rand
confuse (1) what we can conceive exists, with (2) what actually exists.


> Objectivity exists and you cannot
> claim, from a non-objective view (eg, relativism) that it does not. There IS
> objectivity, ie, I can connect my mind, via coice and logic, to objective
> reality, a reality in which existence is identity, ie, that things are what
> they, not some language game or text, are. Your concern with your subjectivi- 
> ty also exists. So?! 

Both objectivity and subjectivity exist as concepts -- we obviously have
thought of their possible existence in these posts.  But which
accurately describes the relation of our imaginations to the real universe?
I can conceive of time travel and sentient flamingo creatures from Neptune, 
but I cannot prove or disprove that either really exists.  Likewise, I
can imagine that I have an objective link to reality, but I have no way
to prove or disprove the truth of that vision.

     My imagination goes very far, but existence does not always
cooperate.  Even if existence exists, what then do we know?  It includes
everything you can think of -- but much of that will never exist
outside the confines of your imagination: the thought of a thing may
exist, but the thing itself may not.  If I understand the definition of 
"objective reality" correctly, objectivism states: "If you can think it 
exists, it surely must exist."  "It" itself, not merely the *thought*
of "it."

     One last question for you, Stephen -- HOW do you know when you are
connected to objective reality?

Daniel Kranowski
email: daniel@vtserf.cc.vt.edu

Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
From: feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld)
Subject: Re: WHAT IS LOVE?
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 18:16:29 GMT

In article <1187@kepler1.rentec.com> andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) writes:
>In article <403@thunder.LakeheadU.Ca> skataria@thunder.LakeheadU.Ca (skataria) writes:
>>
>>WHAT IS LOVE? 
>>Can somebody give me a convincing answer?
>
>Undoubtedly yes.
>
>
>But perhaps not me.
>
>Later,
>Andrew Mullhaupt


Here's a start: 'tis not hereafter.

Robert Solomon has written quite a bit of promising stuff on the
philosophy of love.  I'd suggest he'd be a good place to start your
inquiry (or, considering the context, your quest).
-- 
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	                     
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta