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Re: [ontolog-forum] Maxwell's Equations for Knowledge

To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 02:18:36 -0400
Message-id: <5344E63C.2060802@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Dick,    (01)

There are three independent issues:    (02)

  1. Your claims about the value of your notation for representing
     logic in a more readable form than predicate calculus.    (03)

  2. The value of Ayn Rand's ontology.    (04)

  3. The usefulness of applying #1 to clarify or develop #2.    (05)

Re #1:  As a teacher of logic, I'm sympathetic to efforts to make
logic more readable and understandable.  I've seen many failed
attempts.  So I'm skeptical about claims for any new notation.
But I'm willing to give people a chance to demonstrate that their
pet notations are useful.  I suggested a way for you to do that.    (06)

Re #2:  I attended a lecture by Ayn Rand when I was an undergraduate
at MIT.  Like most people in the audience, I was underwhelmed.  She
was a professional novelist and screen writer.  That's a respectable
profession, which requires a considerable amount of talent.    (07)

But as a philosopher, logician, and scientist, the best that can be
said about her is that anybody who respects Aristotle can't be totally
bad.  But her achievements in logic, philosophy, and psychology are
far below the level achieved by her master over two millennia ago.    (08)

Re #3:  I'm skeptical about #1, find nothing useful in #2, and
consider the exercise of using an untested notation to represent
useless axioms misguided -- to say the least.    (09)

John    (010)

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