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

[Steven Ericsson-Zenith <steven@xxxxxxx>]

And so, we are to take from this that (according to the political philosophy of Rand) you have been a corporate slave for your entire life, during which time you have been brainwashed into accepting the callous philosophy of Objectivism, it is your religion for you cannot look upon the world without consideration of it, and since your retirement you have built a little technology that appears to you to be both productive and useful, rather than merely self-satisfying.

Or, is it perhaps, that we have learned something. You have been exploited your entire life by an elitist system of thought that does not adhere to its own premises, and you, like us all, need to be more open minded and work harder to understand the compassionate implications of the scientific method.

To this end, that of learning something in the single lifetime open to consideration, you might reassess your goals. 

Steven

 

On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 6:11 AM, Richard H. McCullough <rhmccullough@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Well said, John.

#2 and #3 are judgment calls, which only you can make for yourself.

I have some brief remarks re #1.
I agree that I have not proved my claims.
I have personally done a lot of testing.

I began to think about mKR in the 60s, after I first read Rand's
"Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology".  ITOE affected me
in the way that many people were affected by her fiction.
I had read a little philosophy, and considered it long, boring
and useless.  Rand was like a breath of fresh air.
She definitely did not  surpass Aristotle, but she wrote with
a clear, direct style that was [mostly] easy to understand,
and it inspired me.

After I retired, I began to work seriously on mKR.
Off and on, for 20 years, I have used mKR in my daily life.
I have used mKR to clarify my own thinking.
I have discussed it with friends who are Ayn Rand fans.
I have tested it by translating definitions and other passages
from ITOE.  I have tested it by translating logical expressions.
I have tested it by translating news articles.
I used mKR to implement genealogy programs to record
my family's history.  I improved the efficiency of mKE to
 accommodate the larger family as it grew to 100, then 1000.
 I truely believe the claims I have made about mKR.

I have been writing, and re-writing,  the "Objectivist Context"
for many years.  Harry Binswanger's "How We Know" stimulated
me to put the final touches on it.  I'm proud of it.

All this does not alter the fact that I have not proved my claims.
I accept that fact.

 
Dick McCullough
Context Knowledge Systems
mKE and the mKR language
mKR/mKE tutorial

> Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2014 02:18:36 -0400
> From: sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx
> To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Maxwell's Equations for Knowledge

>
> Dick,
>
> There are three independent issues:
>
> 1. Your claims about the value of your notation for representing
> logic in a more readable form than predicate calculus.
>
> 2. The value of Ayn Rand's ontology.
>
> 3. The usefulness of applying #1 to clarify or develop #2.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> John
>
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