--- by JLS
----- for the GC
Furher to Doctorow, "Probably Grice":
Cooley in Journal of Philosophy (this may interest R. B. Jones):
[PDF]On Mr. Toulmin's Revolution in Logic
"Urmson duplicates Carnap's mistake of supposing
that there are two senses of " probable." But the question is not supposed to be one of the sort which could be settled ... prognosticator cannot assert that it will probably rain "in the ...
www.jstor.org/stable/2021996
Which has a good Griceian ring to it: "Do not multiply senses of 'probable' beyond necessity".
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Thank you. I will try to read Cooley soon.
ReplyDeleteI also have something to add about my present belief that physics is a branch of philosophy. Grice had the right idea, I think, in focusing on intentions, meaning, believing, moods, psychological states, procedures, optimal states, communicating, justifying, thinking, desiring, "should", "ought". But how should philosophers take the initiative in converting apparent physics research into what it really is - philosophy research? Here are some suggestions based on P(A-->B) in ordinary English.
1. Look at the papers online in arXiv and Front for the Mathematics ArXiv, which contain most of the research in physics and mathematics (as well as many other quantitative fields) since 1991.
2. Most of the papers will seem illegible or "unreadable" to a non-expert, but the ABSTRACT of each paper and often the SUMMARY or CONCLUSION tends to be in ordinary English because there are so many branches of physics and mathematics that "everybody is a non-expert".
3. Two key types of papers to look for are those which involve Probability 0 (nil) and those which involve DIFFERENCES of two variables, both of which are central to P(A-->B). The first type includes papers on the Holographic Principle of 't Hooft (Utrecht U. Netherlands) and Branes (including Randall-Sundrum theory, Kaluza-Klein theory, and so on). The second can be established by scanning the main theorems of the paper in question - those papers which include differences in variables like u - v or w - z or whatever among their main theorems tend to be key. The main theorems are often cited in the Introduction by number and section or subsection, by saying "The main results proven are" or the "The main theorems proven are".
If one can get to this stage, then all that is left is to find out what the symbols u, v, w, z, and so on mean. These are often explicitly listed in a list of symbols early in the paper, but sometimes just keep looking for the first occurrence of the symbol, such as "u". It will usually be defined explicitly, although if it is defined by other non-word symbols, then you have to look up those symbols until you get back to word definitions or something close to them.
In my opinion, there is nothing in physics or mathematics that cannot be translated into ordinary English as spoken by people in universities in the U.K. or comparable nations, usually in quite simple English.
Osher Doctorow
Yes. Formal logic should NEVER be over-valued. I have noted that there is indeed a trend nowadays to avoid symbolism altogether! -- I mean, I LOVE Grice when he goes to give his list:
ReplyDelete~ read: 'not'
/\ and
\/ or
) if
(x) all
(Ex) "some (at least one)"
(ix) the
--- in fact that's full stop. He only mentions this seven things.
So, there is some VERY basic symbolism that is necessary to keep the Gricean ball rolling. But surely what matters is how those things translate to English or any other natural language.
Formalists diverge on this, and the worst (I love him) was Hilbert: he thought logic was like a formal painting. Not an ABSTRACT painting ('that line there represents her legs') -- a merely formal one, like Mondrian. To ask, 'and what does "THIS" mean?" would be, for Hilbert, otiose!
----
Yes, mathematics is possibly a branch of philosophy, or vice versa. Recall that Plato had this sign in his academy: "No way you can get into here without a proper knowledge of mathematics" which perhaps was a bit excessive. After all, the thing was held in the Garden of Hekademos, so why insist that Chauncey Gardiner know topology? (:)).