Cooper says that a formalist, with only formal constraints on his logic
(such as consistensy) is at the mercy of the formalism itself. Such a
formalism is allways a special case, but Cooper warns of the danger that
classical logic is not recognized as such. He calls for a relativistic
evolutionary logic where classical logic only would be justified for certain
special classes of problems. An evolutionary metatheory of logic would
recognize which those problems are.

LN

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Från: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] För Jesse Mazer
Skickat: den 10 juli 2006 03:06
Till: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Ämne: Re: SV: Only logic is necessary?


Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>
>1Z wrote:
> >
> > Brent Meeker wrote:
> >
> >
> >>You misunderstand "population models".  It's not a question of what 
>members of a species think or
> >>vote for; it's a matter of whether their logic will lead to their 
>survival in the evolutionary
> >>biological sense.  So the majority can be wrong.
> >
> >
> > Cooper is making valid comments about *something*, but it isn't logic.
> > Logic is what tells us the majority can be wrong
>
>Cooper is not talking about logic in the formal sense; he's talking about 
>reasoning, making
>decisions, acting.  This can be "wrong" in the sense that there is a better

>(in terms of survival)
>way of reasoning.
>
>I'm not sure that logic in the formal sense can be right or wrong; it's a 
>set of conventions about
>language and inference.  About the only standard I've seen by which a logic

>or mathematical system
>could be called "wrong" is it if it is inconsistent, i.e. the axioms and 
>rules of inference allow
>everything to be a theorem.

If this is all that Cooper is talking about, I probably wouldn't have any 
objection to it--but Lennart Nilsson seemed to be making much stronger 
claims about the contingency of logic itself based on his interpretation of 
Cooper.

Jesse






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