The Reasoning Show - Miscellaneous Discussion

Some partial backups of posts from the past (Feb, 2004)
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Dan Rowden
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Post by Dan Rowden »

Well, I'll try and put my argument into some kind of formal language and post it after I get back from retrieving our rental bond!
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Cory Duchesne
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Post by Cory Duchesne »

Philosophaster wrote:
Cory Duchesne wrote: I'm curious, how would you express the law of non-contradiction more effectively and simply than A=A?
Law of non-contradiction is:

! ( A & !A ) = "It cannot be the case that both A and not-A" (where "A" is some proposition being considered)
In other words, one cannot say that something is and is not at the same time. A banana is not an apple.

A does not equal B.

But rather, A must equal A.
A = A does not contain or imply (logically) the law of non-contradiction.
The law of A=A is inherently non-contradictory.

It's the basis of making distinctions, and making distinctions is the basis of logic.
Last edited by Cory Duchesne on Thu Apr 12, 2007 12:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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David Quinn
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Post by David Quinn »

Philosophaster wrote:
You can learn all the rules of inference in logic and none of them will enable you to derive "! ( A & !A)" from just "A = A." That makes it an invalid inference, a non-sequitor.
It all depends on how one conceives of A=A. If by "A=A" one means that a thing is itself and not something other than itself, then the law of non-contradiction has already arisen right there. It automatically becomes a contradiction to conceive of a thing being something other than itself.

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Victor wrote:
Cory: Doesn't all categorization rest upon A=A?

DQ: No, all categorization rests on the principle of non-contradiction. A=A is merely a secondary derivation from non-contradiction, the fundamental truth is that a thing is not its own negation -- that ~(A&~A).
The principle of non-contradiction also has its own identity and is not something else. Thus, A=A underlines even it.

Contradiction couldn't begin to be a possibility without the existence of identity. The two go hand in hand. As soon as thing exists, it has an identity and the possibility of misconceiving this identity automatically arises.

In case you haven't guessed, I am rolling my eyes. You people need to get out more, intellectually speaking.
This is code for reading more theology books.

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Post by Philosophaster »

David Quinn wrote:If by "A=A" one means that a thing is itself and not something other than itself...
In formal logic (which is what "A = A" looks like to people familiar with formal logic), the expression you just used would be written "( A = A ) & !( !A = A )" -- "(A equals A) and not (not-A equals A)."
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vicdan
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Post by vicdan »

The funny thing is that QRS aren't content to redefine common terms like 'cause' or 'infinity' -- they even try to grab technical terms and expressions (which is what A=A is) and redefine them, trying to give their verbal games a veneer of respectability, the same sort of thing NewAgers seek when they try to draft terms and concepts from physics in the service of their lunacies.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

vicdan wrote:No, all categorization rests on the principle of non-contradiction. A=A is merely a secondary derivation from non-contradiction, the fundamental truth is that a thing is not its own negation -- that ~(A&~A).
Nope. How can someone 'derivate' a self-evident axiom? Earlier in this thread you even agreed on the axiom of equality in mathematical logic (which A=A could be seen as too) and now it's suddenly a secondary 'derivation'!

If you want to argue that the law of identity can be also described by the principle of non-contradiction, that it includes it, that's okay. You're just changing the wording, following the expansion.

The non-descriptive quality of an axiom like 'A=A' or 'A' is not a weakness (as Hegel already complained about), it's the beauty of it - it's emptiness in a formula LOL. That's exactly what made it useful for taking one further than the empirical while not conflicting with it in the least.

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David Quinn
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Post by David Quinn »

Nat wrote:
David: It's quite funny, really. His spiritual philosophy, which he has spent many years developing, has taken him to the exact same place as a man who has spent no time at all on spiritual development.

Victor: This was what I found so amusing. What you mean is that I have spent no time at on on spiritual matters you approve of. If you were any more myopic, your eyes could serve as a microscope.

Nat: Yeah, the presumptuousness of this is too much. Who is David to claim that a given person has spent "no time at all on spiritual development?"

In my view, spiritual development cannot even begin to take place without valuing Truth as the number one priority and making every effort to discover what it is. However, Victor has long dismissed this possibility from the outset. He has never attempted to venture outside the conventional, empirical mindset - at least not rationally in adult life.

He might be maturing emotionally within this mindset, but that isn't spiritual development. Spiritual development is all about opening one's mind to the Infinite and purifying one's mind and character in the light of this great understanding. Victor has made no movement in that direction.

You, on the other hand, have attempted to move in that direction, which I respect. But then, for some strange reason, you have decided to retreat back to where Victor is. And now your views are fundamentally identical to his. Like him, you only acknowledge empirical realities and dismiss all non-empirical thinking as meaningless.

Personally, I think you're scared of consciousness and its ramifications. This shines through in the show that you did. Whereas Kevin looks at consciousness with great joy at all the possibilities it brings, all you can see are dangers and horrid implications. Retreating back into conventional empiricism is now a safe haven for you - and you do this with what you imagine to be Lao Tzu's blessing as well! It is tantamount to receiving a double reward for your ego.

It's very similar to the way many Christians indulge in obscene money-making exercises and somehow manage to find a way to imagine that Jesus would approve of this. In this way, they gain both material and "spiritual" rewards for their egos. Heaven.

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Post by vicdan »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Nope. How can someone 'derivate' a self-evident axiom? Earlier in this thread you even agreed on the axiom of equality in mathematical logic (which A=A could be seen as too) and now it's suddenly a secondary 'derivation'!
Rent a sarcasm detector, dude.

Yes, identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle are all three independent axioms, and you need all three to have logic. That was my very fucking point, wasted on someone with a defunct communication apparatus it seems.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

vicdan wrote: they even try to grab technical terms and expressions (which is what A=A is)
No, that's how only you are categorizing it but you're just one of a few. If I talk about gravity, or death, it doesn't have to be a 'technical' term either. Even by invoking consensus you could not substantiate this statement above, I bet.

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Post by Elizabeth Isabelle »

David Quinn wrote:Whereas Kevin looks at consciousness with great joy at all the possibilities it brings
If all beings were conscious, there would be great possibilities - a heaven of sorts. But with consciousness, it can be seen that this is so unlikely to happen that it is almost certainly impossible.
.
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Post by vicdan »

David Quinn wrote:In my view, spiritual development cannot even begin to take place without valuing Truth as the number one priority and making every effort to discover what it is. However, Victor has long dismissed this possibility from the outset. He has never attempted to venture outside the conventional, empirical mindset - at least not rationally in adult life.
You poor spiritually retarded child, I fucking worship truth. I just refuse to delude myself, and so I refuse to believe your delusion that Truth is achievable. if it were, i would be all over that shit; and back when I believed that it is a meaningful concept and achievable, I spent all my time and effort on it.

Your view of spirituality -- as the pursuit of absolute Truth -- merely debases spirituality to the level of a common delusion of an insecure mind, an intellectual atavism. Congratulations, you have just turned spirituality into a dirty word.
You, on the other hand, have attempted to move in that direction, which I respect. But then, for some strange reason, you have decided to retreat back to where Victor is.
Nat had moved forward to where I am -- but you, with your voluntarily worn blinders, cannot see it. You are trying to catch a black cat in a dark room, when I stand behind the door and try to talk you out of your terminal idiocy.

You don't understand where I am. You haven't the foggiest fvcking clue. Nat does, having finally arrived here a year or so ago AFAICT; but you -- you sit on a stump and pretend to be on a fvcking mountaintop. You can't even see the snow line from where you sit.
And now your views are fundamentally identical to his. Like him, you only acknowledge empirical realities and dismiss all non-empirical thinking as meaningless.
Try talking about something you understand a bit better, like say chinese hieroglyphics. You are embarrassing yourself.
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Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

vicdan wrote: Yes, identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle are all three independent axioms, and you need all three to have logic.
I don't think it can be demonstrated they are independent. How would you do that?

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vicdan
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Post by vicdan »

Give me first-order logic with induction, and I can prove that you cannot derive non-contradiction and excluded middle from identity.
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Post by Philosophaster »

Do it! Do it!

[Fight! Fight! Fight! :p]
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David Quinn
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Post by David Quinn »

Philosophaster wrote:
DQ: If by "A=A" one means that a thing is itself and not something other than itself...

P: In formal logic (which is what "A = A" looks like to people familiar with formal logic), the expression you just used would be written "( A = A ) & !( !A = A )" -- "(A equals A) and not (not-A equals A)."
As long as the meaning of this expression is identical to the meaning that I conceive of and not something other than it, I don't have a problem with it.

But to be honest, I don't really care what formal logic says. I have no interest in it.

The main problem with translating everything into formal logic is that it can too easily create distortions. Without a clear understanding of what is going on, this is an ever-present danger.

I especially find it disturbing when I come across people who can't think about anything at all without filtering it through a formal, academic process. To me, it's a sign that they have lost the ability to think for themselves. They have to tack everything onto this pre-packaged template before they can do anything, and in the process they surrender their own mental processes for those found in textbooks. It's essentially no different to the fundamentalist Christians who immediately dive into the Bible whenever they are confronted with anything.

Not that I am talking about you personally. I'm just making a general point here.

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Post by Philosophaster »

David Quinn wrote: The main problem with translating everything into formal logic is that it can too easily create distortions.
This is precisely the purpose of formal logic: to avoid the distortions and lack of clarity in much everyday language. Another related purpose is to make it possible to check a proof "mechanically."
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Post by David Quinn »

Victor,
You don't understand where I am.
I was raised in the same mindset that you are currently in, Victor. Most educated people are.

There is nothing esoteric about it. It is the standard, conventional view - at least here in Australia.

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Post by Leyla Shen »

Victor wrote:
Yes, identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle are all three independent axioms, and you need all three to have logic.
Holy sacred trinity, Batman! The meaning of life is 3, not 2--or 42, for that matter!
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David Quinn
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Post by David Quinn »

Philosophaster wrote:
DQ: The main problem with translating everything into formal logic is that it can too easily create distortions.

P: This is precisely the purpose of formal logic: to avoid the distortions and lack of clarity in much everyday language. Another related purpose is to make it possible to check a proof "mechanically."
I agree that the purpose is to try and make the communication of publicly-available knowledge between people clearer. But it isn't much help when it comes to communicating an inward philosophical understanding of things.

The difference between a proper, grounded inward understanding of things and a system of formal logic designed for more outward, social forms of knowledge is immense, and as soon as you try to translate the former into the latter, large misunderstandings and distortions invariably appear. The very translation strips away almost everything that is important and meaningful about the philosophic understanding, including most of its logical properties.

It's a bit like detecting a magnificent spacecraft with a primitive radar system and thus transforming the spacecraft into a little blip on a screen. At best, one can only know a few things about the spacecraft through such a radar system. If one falls into the delusion that the blip is all there is to know about the spacecraft and starts reasoning formally about it on that basis, then the outcome is only going to be a series of limited and/or distorted conclusions at best.

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vicdan
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Post by vicdan »

David Quinn wrote:Victor,
You don't understand where I am.
I was raised in the same mindset that you are currently in, Victor. Most educated people are.

There is nothing esoteric about it. It is the standard, conventional view - at least here in Australia.
Poor David, you have no idea, do you?..

You really should familiarize yourself with modern century philosophy. Just out of curiosity, if for not other reason.

Trust me, my worldview bears very little resemblance to the common secular materialism, except in the broadest outlines, kinda like the way a horsecart and a car both have 4 wheels.
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Unidian
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Post by Unidian »

David Quinn wrote:In my view, spiritual development cannot even begin to take place without valuing Truth as the number one priority and making every effort to discover what it is. However, Victor has long dismissed this possibility from the outset. He has never attempted to venture outside the conventional, empirical mindset - at least not rationally in adult life.
But the trouble here is the same one Victor and others keep complaining about. You are using a very narrow definition of "truth" and making proclamations as if it were the only possible definition. While Victor and I have had our clashes, I've never had any doubt that he is a guy who has dedicated his life to understanding what reality is and what we can know about it (primarily the latter after he realized how it constrains the former). Epistemology, his primary area of interest, is the study of truth in the sense that it deals with the nature of meaningful knowledge and how it is acquired. For you to state that he has no interest in "truth" is proof of one of two things:

1. You are being incredibly presumptous, as I originally suggested.

2. You honestly do not understand how you are substituting a narrow, personalized definition of "truth" for what is generally meant by that term and performing a verbal shell game as a result.

The power to define "truth" is not exclusively yours, unless of course you are prepared to admit to being a religious fundie.
He might be maturing emotionally within this mindset, but that isn't spiritual development. Spiritual development is all about opening one's mind to the Infinite and purifying one's mind and character in the light of this great understanding. Victor has made no movement in that direction.
How are you in a position to assert this, O True Scotsman? Do you have a patent on spiritual development? This is a textbook religious attitude, no?
You, on the other hand, have attempted to move in that direction, which I respect. But then, for some strange reason, you have decided to retreat back to where Victor is.
Following a line of reasoning I feel is consistent with the sources I've studied is a "strange reason?"

Oh, I forgot. Anything inconsistent with your views is a "retreat back into the animal realms" and such.

Moo.
And now your views are fundamentally identical to his.
On ontology and epistemology, yes. Try us on politics or ethics sometime. :P
Like him, you only acknowledge empirical realities and dismiss all non-empirical thinking as meaningless.
Not true. I don't do that and neither does he, as he mentioned in the show. There are tons of areas in which non-empirical thinking is valuable. Ontology just isn't one of them.
Personally, I think you're scared of consciousness and its ramifications.
Yeah, you've stated that before. Believe what you want to.

I'm definitely scared of the arbitrary value judgments you attach to "consciousness" and declare to be the only authentic ramifications thereof. I'm I'm even more scared of the religious thought process that allows you to do that.
This shines through in the show that you did. Whereas Kevin looks at consciousness with great joy at all the possibilities it brings, all you can see are dangers and horrid implications.
Yes, as I mentioned in the show, I do see a danger in labelling people "conscious" and "unconscious" (with ourselves as "conscious," of course). As I said, it's a form of dehumanization - precisely the same kind of thinking that got 6 million Jews shoved into ovens a while back. Yep, I definitely see "dangers" in that. That you guys don't is very interesting, in a psychological sense.
Retreating back into conventional empiricism is now a safe haven for you - and you do this with what you imagine to be Lao Tzu's blessing as well!
I also do it with Chuang Tzu and Nagarjuna's blessings. The latter sent me a Fully Enlightened Secret Decoder Ring with the message, "there are no paramartha discourses." You're free to continue attempting them, though, if it provides you a sense of "Having The Truth." I'll take religious salvationism for $1000, Alex. Oh my, it's today's Daily Double!
It is tantamount to receiving a double reward for your ego.


What is the ego-reward in being "enlightened," "70% conscious," etc?
David Quinn's website wrote:I am a highly logical thinker who spends his days immersing himself in the Infinite. My aim in life is to awaken as many people as possible to this marvellous reality, which I sometimes call God or Tao.

...I consider the great wise men of the past to be my spiritual brothers and colleagues - Socrates, Diogenes, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Nagarjuna, Huang Po, Chuang Tzu, Hakuin, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Eckhart, and Weininger. If it were not for these fearless men, and those like them, the human race would be in total darkness...

Wisdom of the Infinite - An incisive book that rivals Chuang Tzu and Nagarjuna at their best.
No ego there...

Oh, wait, I know. You'll redefine ego so that it excludes the boasting above.
It's very similar to the way many Christians indulge in obscene money-making exercises and somehow manage to find a way to imagine that Jesus would approve of this. In this way, they gain both material and "spiritual" rewards for their egos. Heaven.
And your approach is very similar to the way many intelligent people leave traditional religions but fail to address the spiritual immaturity which keeps them seeking absolute certainty and a "special" self-image indefinitely. The security of having the world figured out and the comfort of being somebody special. Heaven.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

vicdan wrote:Give me first-order logic with induction, and I can prove that you cannot derive non-contradiction and excluded middle from identity.
You're kidding again! Everyone already knows such axioms cannot be derived or proven through formal logic, they are merely assertions.

In the words of Hofstadter: "Provability is a weaker notion than truth"

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David Quinn
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Post by David Quinn »

Victor,
You really should familiarize yourself with modern century philosophy. Just out of curiosity, if for not other reason.
I've already checked it out. The main problem with it is that it is almost exclusively concerned with formal communication and the sharing of outward, social, publicly-available knowledge between people. In other words, it is superficial.

So I personally place it in the same basket as theology - that is, a body of thought which is essentially trivial and concerns itself with things that I have little interest in.

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Post by vicdan »

So you confine yourself to being utterly unable to understand where Nat and I are coming from. Your choice of course.
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Post by Unidian »

vicdan wrote:So you [David] confine yourself to being utterly unable to understand where Nat and I are coming from. Your choice of course.
No, he thinks he understands it. For him, we are unconscious individuals. You have no understanding of anything spiritual and I have a mistaken one.

Same thing his religious colleague Jerry Falwell thinks about us, basically, although Jerry probably at least credits us with consciousness.
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