Ed, (01)
Those issues have been debated for centuries, and attempts to use
modern logic have left them as confused as ever. (02)
EJB
> “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are
> dreamt of in your philosophy”, he is only saying that his
> personal UoD for reasoning about observed events includes things
> that Horatio’s colder realism does not. (03)
Alonzo Church and Willard Van Orman Quine are two logician-
philosophers who were well versed in modern logic and science. (04)
Quine was a strict nominalist who tried to get rid of abstract
entities. Church was a "realist" (in the Scholastic sense) who
made a strong case for admitting them into the UoD, the scientific
realm, and everyday "common sense". (05)
I cited Church's article about the ontological status of women
and abstract entities, which he presented at Harvard in order
to annoy Quine: http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/church.htm (06)
The article is humorous, but deadly serious. Excerpts: (07)
AC
> Quine and Goodman emphasize the economy of nominalism in supposing
> the existence of fewer entities. But the economy which has commonly
> been the concern of the logician, and of the mathematician dealing
> with foundations, has been simply economy of assumption...
> Surely there are other criteria by which to judge a theory.
>
> To return to Quine and Goodman, it is possible, even likely, that
> the failure of their program will demonstrate the untenability of
> their finitistic nominalism... (08)
Following is an article in which I cite and discuss some of those
other criteria, which cannot even be stated in a Quinean framework:
http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/signproc.htm (09)
For a summary of the criticisms (with over 3 dozen references),
see Section 2, "A Static, Lifeless, Purposeless World." (010)
John (011)
_________________________________________________________________
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 (012)
|