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Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 8:02amSanction this postReply
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Democritus on epistemology:
By convention are sweet and bitter, hot and cold, by convention is colour; in truth are atoms and the void. ... In reality we apprehend nothing for certain ...
Recap:
If you have to know things "humanly" -- then you can't know them "in-themselves." (Kantian solipsism foreshadowed)


Democritus on the anthropomorphization of nature:
The atoms struggle and move in the void ...
Recap:
Atoms, like humans, struggle. (this fallacy is pathetic)
Pathetic Fallacy:
The mistake of attributing human aspirations, emotions, feelings, thoughts, or traits to events or inanimate objects which do not possess the capacity for such qualities.

 
 
Democritus on the supposed rift between between the senses and the mind:
There are two forms of knowledge, one legitimate, one bastard. To the bastard belong all the following: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch.
Recap:
There's a rift between the senses and the mind. (Humean solipsism foreshadowed)
 
 
Democritus on the morality of kid-napping; of "friendship"; and of whim-worship:
He who feels any desire to beget a child seems to me better advised to take it from one of his friends; he will then have a child such as he wishes, for he can choose the kind he wants.
Recap:
A morality based on whim-worship is "good advice" -- even if it leads to baby-stealing and double-crossing your own dear friends. (Humean noncognitive ethics foreshadowed)


Some folks would say that Democritus should "get a pass" for being so stupid -- because of how early in human history he spoke. This ignores the timelessness of the truths of philosophy, though. No one gets to escape the moral judgment that goes along with promulgating and propagating a bad philosophy.

Ed

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Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 9:02amSanction this postReply
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Timeless truth such as Aristotle spoke: like heavier things fall faster than lighter things and women have fewer ribs than men.

Demokritos was right about atoms (i.e. the basic building blocks). That is what we are made of. Modern physics has updated AND verified his basic view. Aristotle was wrong about matter being infinitely divisible.

The statements about morality that Demokritos may or may not have made are irrelevant.

Richard Feynman wrote in his famous three volume work on physics, that if all of civilization were to be destroyed and only one thing could be saved it should be the statement that all things are made of atoms (basic building blocks of matter).

The only timeless truth of philosophy is the principle of non-contradiction. All the rest are plausible.

Bob Kolker


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Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 10:15amSanction this postReply
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Don't confuse Aristotle's early attempts at various scientific explanations with "philosophy", per se. That's just creating a straw man to easily knock down. And explaining the basic fabric of reality (e.g., whether atoms are the basic ingredients of physical reality, or whether atoms can be split into more basic ingredients, etc.) is a task for science, not philosophy. Even still, this scientific task -- no matter how accomplished it becomes -- cannot undercut the truths of philosophy.

And the "principle of non-contradiction" either is, or is not, the only rock-solid truth of philosophy -- it can't be both at the same time and in the same respect. Mathematically, the probability of it being true and false is 0.0, denoted by the formula:

P(A and not-A) = 0.0

To say that it's the only timeless truth is, itself, true or false (there is no middle ground). Being one or the other, but not both, it entails the principle of the excluded middle (yet another rock-solid truth of philosophy). Mathematically, the probability of it being true or not is 1.0, denoted by the formula:

P(A or not-A) = 1.0

And, with these 2 things in mind, we can see that the denial of a false statement is true, denoted by the formula:

A <---> ~ ~ A

And that's just the beginning of rock-solid truths available to those who think straight about philosophy.


Ed



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Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 12:05pmSanction this postReply
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A = A, A v -A and -(A & -A) are all equivalent in classical logic.

Bob Kolker


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Post 4

Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 2:23pmSanction this postReply
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That's just it, Bob. I'm not talking about "classical logic" done in ivory towers with abstractions, or abstractions from abstractions, etc.

I'm talking about day-to-day reasoning done by the folks next door (the application of logical laws to human thought). One thought, which uses the third logical law which I presented, is that man should be free. It's not axiomatic that man should be free, but it's necessarily true. One way to get to this necessary truth is by examining the particulars of the world.One judgment/evaluation of whether or not man should be free comes looking at when men weren't free -- and noting what that's like. Here are telling quotes:

Frederick Douglass
Whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom.

The iron gate of our prison stands half open. One gallant rush from the North will fling it wide open, while four millions of our brothers and sisters shall march out into liberty. The chance is now given you to end in a day the bondage of centuries, and to rise in one bound from social degradation to the place of common equality with all other varieties of men.

Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.

The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.

If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! ... And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! ... your interference is doing him positive injury.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
 
If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.


Booker T. Washington
From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.
 
No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.
 
I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery.

 
Recap:
Slavery doesn't "work." Therefore, its opposite -- "freedom" -- is safe to adopt as a guiding principle of human life on Earth. and, importantly, we don't have to go around examining every case of freedom to know this, either. One way to come to know this -- without studying every case of it -- is by disproving the opposite of it. In a case where it's one or the other -- disproving an opposite simultaneously proves it to be true (without even looking at each case individually).

If a fair coin were tossed and it turned up heads, you could say with certainty that the side facing down is tails -- you do not need to turn the coin over and look. It is precisely this "short-cut" to certainty -- being able to know the solution to life's shell games (without having to look under every imaginable shell) -- that philosophy alone grants man on Earth.

By knowing that it's opposite is wrong, we can instantaneously know that freedom is right (reductio ad absurdum). The problem is that too few folks adopt this correct way of thinking.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 4/05, 2:26pm)


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Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 3:20pmSanction this postReply
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Classical logic, in the form of boolean algebra is used to design sequential circuits for computers. Some ivory tower that is. Formal logic has been at the heart of computer design since the 1950's.

You have a slight problem. You are ignorant of mathematics. Now it is no shame to be ignorant of anything, since we are all born ignorant. Also there is a remedy. Learn something about the subject --THEN make comments about it.

Bob Kolker


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Post 6

Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 8:30pmSanction this postReply
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Bob,

When I was an undergrad, I took math classes, even pre-calculus. Yet you sit there and cast stones my way.

I know more about math than you will apparently ever know about philosophy.

Ed


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Post 7

Sunday, April 6, 2008 - 6:52amSanction this postReply
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Bob,

When I was an undergrad, I took math classes, even pre-calculus. Yet you sit there and cast stones my way.

I know more about math than you will apparently ever know about philosophy.

Ed
Darn! There is a subject test in mathematics, but not in philosophy. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_Record_Examination#GRE_Subject_Tests

Finding an untestable statement, Bob jumps for joy. :-)


(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 4/06, 7:22am)


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Post 8

Sunday, April 6, 2008 - 8:46amSanction this postReply
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You claim to know more foolishness than I. You are probably right.

Here is one of my favorite Heinlein quotes. Maybe you will like it also.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes bathe, and not make messes in the house.
-- Robert A. Heinlein



Bob Kolker


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Sunday, April 6, 2008 - 11:42amSanction this postReply
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Bob,

I find it hard to believe that you are getting sanctioned for such degrading insults. Maybe it's our own Claude Shannon. Maybe it's just some RoR participant with a vile sense of life.

I don't suspect that the sanctioner(s) would be so courageously-transparent as to come forward for public acknowledgement of their integrity to this conviction? ...

Bob, would you tell me how many sanctions you've received for your degrading insult? Don't worry about the math involved (in drawing an inference), trust me to be able to figure that out.

;-)

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 4/06, 11:43am)


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Sunday, April 6, 2008 - 1:50pmSanction this postReply
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Five.

And it was not an insult. It was a quotation from Robert A. Heinlein.

Bob Kolker


Post 11

Sunday, April 6, 2008 - 3:55pmSanction this postReply
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Bob,

And it was not an insult. It was a quotation from Robert A. Heinlein.
Well it sure looked, felt, sounded, smelled and tasted like an insult. Well, I guess that means that I need to step up my critical discernment then, so that I don't keep making such mistakes in judgment.

It must be my conspiracy-thinking that's to blame, but I actually thought you were using the quote as an indirect insult!

Can you believe that?!

Ed


Post 12

Sunday, April 6, 2008 - 4:54pmSanction this postReply
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I sanctioned Bob's post. I greatly respect Robert A. Heinlein and like that quote very much . Heinlein was an earlier and more profound influence on me than Ayn Rand. I believe he saved my life. As a 10 year old I was reading his books many times over.

I also happen to like Bob Kolker. You take offense too easily Ed. In my opinion.

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Sunday, April 6, 2008 - 5:15pmSanction this postReply
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When I was younger -The Moon is a Harsh Mistress- was close to Holy Writ for me. Sort of like -Atlas Shrugged- is to Objectivists. Two sci-fi books occupied my top shelf. -The Moon is a Harsh Mistress- and -The Dispossessed- by Ursula LaGuin. LaGuin was to anarchism, what Rand was to capitalism.

Bob Kolker


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Sunday, April 6, 2008 - 6:02pmSanction this postReply
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Yes, Mike, I quite agree - Heinlein was a tremendous influence on me as well - long with his "Moon..." book, "The Past Thru Tomorrow" collection of his future history stories sits on my hardbound shelf - and his 'Requiem' still brings a lump to my throat each time I read it, so much it resonates to me....

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Sunday, April 6, 2008 - 8:33pmSanction this postReply
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Mike,

I have respect for you and I don't take offense to your sanction of Bob's quote. Maybe you wouldn't take offense to someone (like Bob here) who calls what it is that you know "foolishness," and then insinuates that you are tolerably "subhuman."

I prefer to respond differently to that sort of thing. I won't bother quoting Rand on this kind of reaction to this kind of behavior -- I'll just agree to disagree with you about it. You think I shouldn't take offense to it, and I do.

Ed


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Tuesday, April 8, 2008 - 6:10amSanction this postReply
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Hasn't Bob admitted being subhuman himself--only passing for human? Or was he claiming to be superhuman?

Post 17

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 - 1:19pmSanction this postReply
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A small jest. I pass for NT (Neurologically Typrical). I am completely human. I have 23 pair of chromosomes and I have begotten normal children and grandchildren. I can cope with mathematics (a lot more advanced than you can). I am an aspie, a neurologically atypical human. The difference is probably genetic. Unlike you, I have a brain that can do everything you claim your mind does and even more. I do not require non-material ghosts in my attic to function.

Bob Kolker




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Tuesday, April 8, 2008 - 3:04pmSanction this postReply
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I shall bite my tongue. Have fun in this section.

Post 19

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 - 4:02pmSanction this postReply
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I like the Heinlein quote and I consider it a rough and ready equivalent of Rand's exhortation to live the life of man qua man. Unfortunately, I probably fall into the tolerably subhuman category of Heinlein's having only finished math through partial differential equations and Fourier analysis. I consider it a point of pride that I exhorted my younger brother to do better.  Anyway, it's a point of fact that those who do not try to attain the best math proficiency they can are making a choice to be sealed off from a big part of human knowledge.

However, I consider the same thing to be true about organic chemistry and I'm totally uncomfortable with my knowledge of biochemistry. The great thing is that we all have room to grow :-).

Jim


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