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—Ruakh_TALK 00:28, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Logic

Another response to your message has been added on User talk:BlueNight#Logic. --BlueNight 06:34, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Lucretius as a scientist

Hi,

You used the following remark to your recent edit note to your recent edit of On the Nature of Things:

Accusing Lucretius of not claiming to be a scientist - a word coined by William Whewell in 1833 - doesn't help to contextualise his work.

My spin on Lucretius is that of a historian of science. If we go by the definition that no one before Whewell was a scientist, we rule out Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Ptolemy, and Aristotle, all of whom occupy major places in the literature of the history of science.

I maintain that when Lucretius claims that we can't know the reasons for eclipses and the phases of the moon, when his predecessors had already made good scientific demonstrations of those reasons, he is making a scientific claim. Any article about his work should evaluate that claim, within the criteria of his time. --SteveMcCluskey 21:47, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

If you look at what I took out, I think you'll see that our views aren't particularly opposed. I deleted this chunk-

"Actually, Lucretius was a philosopher. As a poet he was competent. But as a scientist, he never claimed to be one, nor did his work claim to be scientific. "De Rerum Natura" is an epistemological foundation for what should be studied, not a study itself."

Philosophy and Science were viewed as synonymous during Lucretius' time. The author of the above text is claiming that, because Lucretius never explicitly referred to himself as a "scientist", his works cannot be treated as scientific. I agree with you that he made "scientific" (if that word means anything) evaluations of his surroundings. I think the article discusses this adequately, but it could be expanded, of course! Thoughts, concerns, criticisms?--134.10.121.56 03:47, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

p.s. I made those edits while logged out; accidentally. I've copied these comments and pasted them to my talkpage. This is my username.--Heyitspeter 03:51, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I got your message; your point was well taken.

As to keeping track of replies, I prefer to keep replies in one place and usually put pages where I've posted on my watch list for a while.

I agree that De Rerum Natura needs work; I see the problem as one of putting some balance in the article's presentation. As I've mentioned in the past on its talk page, the article focuses almost entirely on the ethical side of L's writing. From reading it, one would scarcely know that most of his book was about the physical world. --SteveMcCluskey 03:52, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. I'll try to help add as I have time. The article is on my watchlist as well, now. We'll see where it goes!--Heyitspeter 04:38, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Edit summary

-Midnightdreary 16:45, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Richard Rorty

Thank you for that link. It is, as you said, a beautiful article. Cheers, Iknowyourider (t c) 04:15, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing it to my attention! There's so much hate directed towards the post-modernists, it seems. It's nice to read an article by someone who can understand them, and is empathetic.--Heyitspeter 18:23, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Richard Dawkins

Thank you for the "public service announcement" from Richard Dawkins :) I'm sorry about the late reply (this is the first time I've actually logged in before viewing wiki pages since the end of October). I think Dawkins means well (at least in his mind) but comes off just as fundamentalist as any sect member. I also appreciated your comments on whether or not Dawkins' criticism of postmodern work is relevant, and the witty idea to include his comments in the "postmodernism is boring" section :) His empty remarks had no place in that article. Feel free to send me more funny youtubes on R. Dawkins' crusade for science. Take care Timeloss 21:32, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your Message

I might get an account but I prefer if the material speaks for itself. On looking at your above comments I presume you are referring to the postmodernism addition I made. The stuff I added was all referenced, the article had given the impression that PM began in architecture of all things, one of our more conservative arts-- though for that reason a good indicator of entrenchment! It also left out the fact that the word was used as early at 1870 and a number of other uses, eg Pannwitz from Nietzsche in 1917, and others that the OED showed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.203.45.210 (talk) 16:47, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Hey, whatever works. At the very least it'll be a good experiment. Maybe I'm the first to demonstrate unconscious bias against unregistered users! In any case, the Postmodernism article definitely does need work, and hopefully we'll get more like you (or even from you) as we go on. --Heyitspeter (talk) 20:06, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

PROD tag

Hello,

As an FYI, {{PROD}} is actually only for article space, not talk pages. The correct way to flag a redirect for deletion is {{db-move}}. That said, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity is actually the correct title as book titles normally have all important words capitalized per Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (capitalization). --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:33, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Check the bookcover here... Of course book titles 'normally' have all important words capitalized. We have an abnormality on our hands. It's likely that he actively chose to lowercase each word, for the same reason he actively (and explicitly) chose to lowercase the word truth to demarcate it from Truth, which he discussed in this very same book. Please reconsider making the deletion. --Heyitspeter (talk) 08:33, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Why the capital letters?

Why would you title an article Epistemic Modal Logic with capital "M" and a capital "L", instead of epistemic modal logic with lower-case initials? WP:MOS clearly calls for lower case except when there's some special occasion for using the capital, and that's what you see all around you on Misplaced Pages. (I've moved it to the title with lower-case initials.) Michael Hardy (talk) 21:54, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Haha why are you angry? It was unintentional; you can think of it as a typo. I'm not even sure the move was warranted in the first place it'd be nice to expand on the article to encompass non-modal epistemic logic without creating two separate articles. Here's hoping there's literature on that. --Heyitspeter (talk) 22:08, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Hey its Peter

Re:Interpretation (logic)

The formulation that you reverted is strictly more correct than yours. No it is not a function in an object language, it is an expression in a metalanguage talking about an object language (i.e. saying what the symbols of it mean). Most significantly to observe is that ontologically, it is an idea (or concept or abstraction depending on your POV). I am puzzled by your apparent confidence given that this isn't a difference of formulation, you are saying it is something it isn't.

The type-token distinction in dealing with ideas is well known and used to clarify this very thing (see Carnap Quine, Putnam etc). On a brighter note, I am glad to see your contributions in general. I think there are some things we may agree on that others do not. Be well Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 00:32, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

My phrasing was poor but I stand by my statement. You're thinking of interpretation as hermeneutic. This is interpretation as logical function. You're proposed header should go on another page called "What does formal logic signify?" or something. Please read the section above the one you just voted on.--Heyitspeter (talk) 00:41, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Okay help me out here...what statement do you disagree with ...

A) an interpretation is an idea, and the written marks on a page are tokens of the idea. (I understand that people commonly don't make this distinction in casual language, however the idea here is to be as precise as the academicians).

B) an interpretation is expressed in a metalanguage whose expressions talk about some object language.

Both are quite true<ref>Geoffery Hunter, ''Metalogic''</ref>

I agree with you that "extension" should be included (in place of "meaning" is just fine and appropriate clarification), however I don't think anyone else in the group cares about that kind of stuff -- at all. I also would love to see a section on interpretations of modal logic as well. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 00:59, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

It sounds trivial but this ambiguity affects the entire article. The section on truth-functional connectives that I just altered originally claimed that the connectives are interpreted. This only makes sense if you take interpretation other than in the technical sense. Again, sorry I was overly harsh. That was unwarranted on various levels.--Heyitspeter (talk) 01:55, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

As I have been pointing out, they are interpreted. We could equally well interpret ${\displaystyle \lor }$ to denote conjunction. But, because these are usually treated as logical constants in first-order logic, we do not require a structure (mathematical logic) to define meanings for them. That does not mean that they are not interpreted. The article is not only about first-order interpretations; it also includes interpretations in which ${\displaystyle \lor }$ indicates conjunction and ${\displaystyle \land }$ indicates disjunction. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:58, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Nah, that's not it. Since interpretation isn't meaning, it's okay to say that ${\displaystyle \lor }$ means "or", while admitting that the symbol is uninterpreted. Remember that a logic has multiple interpretations (2^n where n = the number of sentence letters), but the logical connectives remain constant.

If ${\displaystyle \lor }$ was uninterpreted, then we would have no semantics (no extension, no truth value, no meaning) for ${\displaystyle A\lor B}$, even if we have a truth value for A and for B. Whenever we assign semantics to a symbol, that is an "interpretation" in the sense of the article in question. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:12, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

You still haven't realized that you're dealing with two uses of the word interpretation. First reread the comment you just now responded to. Then read the now-edited section on logical connectives in the disputed article. This is explained there.--Heyitspeter (talk) 02:15, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I do realize that. I am saying that the article is about the broader concept of assignment of semantic meaning to symbols, not about the narrower concept of structure (mathematical logic). The point of logical constants is not that they are uninterpreted, but that they are always interpreted the same way. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:18, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

But none of the article is about that, even just as a fact of the matter. I was thinking about this, though. I suppose you could ask why we use a given interpretation function, and this would broach a lot of the subjects that you seem to want to address. For example, why assign "1" to P when you're doing philosophy? The answer seems to be that you are the interpretation function, and you assign "1" to P because you use P as shorthand for "Peter is on Misplaced Pages" and 1 as shorthand for "Truth." That isn't irrelevant to this article. --Heyitspeter (talk) 03:01, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

What do you make of Interpretation_(logic)#Example? That is at least one example in the article that does not fit into the "interpretation functions" framework. It is true that, at that level of generality, one cannot say too much, so the article goes on to discuss more common systems. But the article is also just missing content about other sorts of interpretations (for example, interpretations of scientific theories should probably be discussed). — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:23, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Re Gregbard: There is a section in the article on nonclassical logics, although it is short. As for particular issues with your text:

• The "idea" sentence in particular is misguided; we could start every article on mathematics with "XXX is an idea,..." but that would not help anything. An interpretation, in many cases of interest, is a function; I have no idea what a physical token of a function is.

Carl, this is a wild presumption that just everything is an idea so there is no point in identifying ideas. The point here is that the things we are dealing with are the type of idea that does not appear to the mind as an image, and therefore the only precise way to define them is to recognize that we are dealing with ideas, not marks on paper. Logicians use the marks on paper as a tool to help understand the ideas. Unfortunately, this practice can lead to paradox if the distinction is not made explicit. That's why "metalanguage" and the "type-token distinction" is important. This is the way responsible analytic philosophers and logicians deal with these things.-GB

• The "expressed in a metalanguage" claim is also off, for the same reason. In the specific case of first-order logic, an interpretation is a structure, which is a collection of sets. There are uncountably many interpretations, and thus most of them cannot be "expressed" in any reasonable (i.e. finitely definable) metalanguage.

Carl, it is not essential for the existence of a formula that there be any actual token instances of it. This is the only way it makes any sense to talk about a language with uncountably many formulas in the first place. There just is no such thing as an object language that floats out there with no metalanguage. It exists as an idea and there is nothing anyone can do about it from the moment there is any object language. It make no sense to me to talk about object langauge without talking about metalanguage. If there are further distinctions to make as you claim, then they should be elucidated (perhaps in its own section).-GB

• The claim "The formal languages used in mathematical logic and theoretical computer science are defined in solely syntactic terms, " is false. For example, the set of sentences in the language of arithmetic that are true in the standard model of the natural numbers is a formal language, but is not definable in syntactic terms.

I think you have unintentionally mish-mashed syntax and semantics inappropriately for two languages. A formal language must be capable of being defined entirely in terms of its syntax and without regard to any interpretation of it otherwise it is not a formal language. This is also from Hunter. .-GB

— Carl (CBM · talk) 01:33, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Be well Carl. Stay cool. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 01:59, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

1. A formal language is any fixed set of sentences over a fixed alphabet. Therefore the set of sentences that are true in the standard model of the natural numbers is a formal language. Hunter is somewhat idiosyncratic on this point, which is why it is important to consult more than one reference. Every set of sentences forms a formal language; thus most of them will not be syntactically definable.
2. As I have pointed out before, there is an equally valid argument that a formula is a token, as it is a syntactic object. Again, you cannot look only at one reference. It is telling that most books on mathematical logic manage to describe formulas perfectly well without using the word "token". It would be silly to claim such books are not by "logicians".

— Carl (CBM · talk) 02:06, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Interpretation (logic)

I think the conversation there is getting somewhat frustrating, so perhaps we can start fresh.

I completely understand what an interpretation of propositional logic, predicate logic, or modal logic is. And the books you have cited use the usual terminology for that.

My concern is that the article is intended to cover interpretations more generally. For example:

• For the language consisting of words on the two symbols "A" and "B", one interpretation assigns each word an integer by subtracting the number of Bs from the number of As
• Another interpretation of the same language assigns each word to a location on the Cartesian plane. You start at the origin facing North. Then, working from left to right: each "A" means go forward one unit, each "B" means turn 90 degrees to the right.

Now the article does spend some time on interpretations of propositional and first-order logic. It probably spends too long on those, as they are covered in depth in other articles, and so can be just summarized. But the article does not spend long enough on interpretations of modal logic, nor on interpretations of intuitionistic logic.

By the way, interpretations of intuitionistic logic are one place where the connective are not given the same meaning as in classical logic. For example, the BHK interpretation is an "interpretation" in some sense, but does not assign the same meanings to the connectives that classical interpretations do. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:43, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

P.S. I will be traveling for a few days and so my responses will be delayed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:57, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Cool I like that. It seems like a usage of interpretation that doesn't fit my understanding of the term as it relates to logic. Let's include it. How do you want to handle that? Should we make a clear distinction between the two types of interpretation, in separate sections? You seem more mathematically inclined, so maybe you'd be able to translate the general mathematical definition of interpretation from that article you linked into layman's terms and then use the rest of the article to discuss the broader senes of "interpretation"? Have fun on your trip.--Heyitspeter (talk) 22:39, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Say Hey (itspeter), I think perhaps you may be interested to see another version of the Interpretation article which had existed previously with a lot more sections, more complete sections, etcetera. It was filled with overly complex material however I admit, but the current version is still lacking some of the material covered in it. Be well, Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 20:43, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Most recent

I have challenged your most recent revert on the Climatic Research Unit hacking incident on the talk page. Please respond as soon as possible - it appears you were mistaken about who was "misrepresenting" what sources said. Hipocrite (talk) 10:28, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up! --Heyitspeter (talk) 10:42, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Your added source dosen't say what you say it says. Please revert to the version supported by sources - I'm not going to argue with you about it further, rather, I'm going to take your false edit summaries (which accused me, wrongly, of misrepresenting sources which you didn't check) to the probation board. Hipocrite (talk) 10:55, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree the assertion in the edit summary was a mistake on my part, and I apologize for that. I've admitted this in the section you created on the talkpage. --Heyitspeter (talk) 10:59, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

And where is MY FUCKING APOLOGY for you accusing me of misrepresenting sources? Why aren't you reverting when you know you are wrong? Hipocrite (talk) 11:00, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I get it - you think that saying "he assertion in the edit summary was a mistake on my part, and I apologize for that," is the same as saying "You know, Hipocrite, it wasn't right for me to have accused you of misrepresenting sources. I'm going to stop accusing you of malfeasance now, because you aren't being dishonest. I'm really sorry I accused you of being dishonest." Not "I'm sorry I made a mistake!" Hipocrite (talk) 11:05, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Notpology seems apposite. . . dave souza, talk 12:32, 7 February 2010 (UTC)