Dear John, (01)
Thank you for taking the time to review. (02)
The lecture can be found at http://youtu.be/zF5Bp_YsZ3M - I include it
here to point out that the Q&A at the end of the lecture provides
additional comments related to the Peirce family, computation, and an
outline of the equations involved. (03)
Paul Borrill is a friend and occasional colleague. We have spoken
about time a great deal. In this lecture Paul makes many good points
but, watching this presentation again, I am left with the fact that
Paul does not make clear the epistemology involved. (04)
I am glad that you appreciate my epistemological endeavour. I agree
with all of your comments and those of Peirce and Scott. Scott's is
the word of greatest caution; to whit, do we have the clarity of
conception for a fully formal account of experience - and the answer
is, sadly, no. Although this book certainly takes steps toward it. We
need a broader consideration of structure by biophysicists and a
definitive account of cellular genesis. (05)
For me time is a redundant formal notion, and this is Mach's point,
given on the slide in Paul's presentation - that speaks, at core, to
time being a purely mathematical way of speaking about motion and
energy. It cannot be absolute, it must always be relative, but this
is, in fact, because it does not exist. (06)
My view says non-locality is an evident product of the basis of
experience in flexible closed structures, i.e., it is a feature of the
world evident in all biophysics. No experience reduces to a point and
its presence must play a physical role upon structure in both sense
and response. (07)
I hope you will be receptive to my sending you the full book for
review when I am ready. (08)
Regards,
Steven (09)
On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 7:09 AM, John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Steven,
>
> I was tied up with other projects when you sent the note about
> your book. Since you asked for comments, I'll contribute a few.
>
>> preview... consisting of the first chapter of my book,
>>
>> https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1137409
>
> Re Peirce family: I have a high regard for their work, and I'm
> happy to see and hear discussions based on their contributions.
>
> Re CSP: Among the additions that Charles added to his father
> Benjamin's book, Linear Associative Algebras, was the proof
> that division is only defined for dimensions 1 (real numbers),
> 2 (complex numbers), 4 (quaternions), and 8 (octonions).
>
> Re geometric algebras: I also have a high regard for that field,
> especially since the work by David Hestenes in reviving Clifford
> algebras for use in physics. They have also been useful in
> computer vision.
>
> That link between physics and computer vision may provide
> some support for your work in using such algebras to relate
> physics to experience.
>
> Re epistemology: The word 'certainty' is always a warning sign.
> As CSP said,
>> It is easy to speak with precision upon a general theme.
>> Only, one must commonly surrender all ambition to be certain.
>> It is equally easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently
>> vague. It is not so difficult to be pretty precise and fairly
>> certain at once about a very narrow subject. (CP 4.237)
>
> As a logician, Peirce was as at least as good as Frege.
> But CSP also spent many years working in experimental physics
> and engineering. That gave him a clear perspective on the
> difference between a "God's eye" theory and a merely human
> (i.e., engineering) experience.
>
> For some discussion about "God's eye" views, I recommend the talk
> by Paul Borrill, which I found on the same page as your talk. I
> sent a note about it to Ontolog Forum. Following is the talk:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKkGqNRlUJM
>
> The impression I get from your first chapter is that you're taking
> a God's eye view. That's OK -- but only if you heed CSP's warning.
> Dana Scott stated a related warning:
>> Formal methods should only be applied when the subject is ready for
>> them, when conceptual clarification is sufficiently advanced...
>> No modal logician really knows what he is talking about in the same
>> sense that we know what mathematical entities are. This is not to say
>> that the work to date in modal logic is all bad or wrong, but I feel
>> that insufficient consideration has been given to questioning
>> appropriateness of results... it is all too tempting to refine
>> methods well beyond the level of applicability.
>
> I quoted this point in an article about epistemic logic:
> http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/5qelogic.pdf
>
> I believe that the current practice of treating epistemology,
> epistemic logic, and philosophy of science as distinct fields is
> a dead end. They're three adjacent sides of the same polyhedron.
> And that polyhedron has enough sides to be a good approximation
> to a sphere.
>
> John
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
> Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
> Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
> To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
> (010)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J (011)
|