On May 7, 5:22 pm, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > On 5/7/2012 2:07 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > On May 7, 3:44 pm, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > >> On 5/7/2012 12:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > >>> On May 7, 1:25 pm, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > >>>> The 'laws' of logic are just the rules of language that ensure we don't > >>>> issue > >>>> contradictory statements. > >>> You have to have logic to begin with to conceive of the desirability > >>> of avoiding contradiction. Something has to put the 'contra' into our > >>> 'diction'. > >> No, you only need to understand negation, to have a language with the word > >> 'not'. Then if > >> someone says to you "X" and "not-X" you immediately realize the need to > >> avoid > >> contradiction, because a contradiction fails to express anything. > > "You immediately realize" = logic. A baby doesn't immediately realize > > that there is a need to avoid contradiction, even though they may > > understand bottle and not-bottle. > > They don't have language either. "Bottle and not-bottle" can only occur in > language, > there is no fact corresponding to "bottle and not-bottle".
Huh? The fact of 'bottle' is the experience of seeing, holding, and using the bottle. The experience of wanting or expecting the bottle when it is no longer present is 'not-bottle'. > > > An insane person or just irrational > > person may not care about avoiding contradiction even though they > > understand negation. > > They may not care to make sense. But then why should we listen to them. I'm not saying that we should listen to them or whether or not they care to make sense, I'm pointing out how you are taking sense and logic completely for granted when you say "you immediately realize the need to avoid contradiction, because a contradiction fails to express anything"; when you claim that "The 'laws' of logic are just the rules of language that ensure we don't issue contradictory statements." > > > Any anticipation of an outcome which results in a > > modification of one's intention is a form of logic. If I avoid > > something for a reason, I am using logic. > > Yes, but not logic alone. You're using it to connect facts and values and > actions that > you know about in other ways. Yes, those other ways are through perception, experience, and thought, ie sense. They don't appear from language, language develops through sense. > > > > >>> The 'laws' of quantum mechanics also follow from simple > >>>> assumptions about the world having symmetries (c.f. Russell Standish's > >>>> "Theory of Nothing" > >>>> and Vic Stenger's "The Comprehensible Cosmos") and having a symmetry is > >>>> a kind of > >>>> 'nothing', i.e. having no distinguishing characteristic under some > >>>> transformation. > >>> Invariance is one aspect of symmetry, > >> It's an essential aspect. A symmetry is a property that is invariant under > >> some > >> transformation. > > All properties are invariant under some transformation, that's what > > makes them a property. Symmetry is a very specific sense of combined > > variance, invariance, but most of all a sense of conjugation by > > opposition. > > You seem to think of symmetry a as single thing. In one sense it is, in other senses it isn't. Symmetry is just a word, but it points to a subject, which always extends to other subjects. > Of course all properties are invariant > under the identity transformation. But some things are invariant under > discrete > translations, some under continuous translation, some under reflection, some > under > interchange,... I'm just talking about a common sense use of property and invariant. By definition a property is a characteristic that persists. Invariance is necessary but not sufficient to describe symmetry or asymmetry. > > > > >>> but you cannot reduce symmetry > >>> to being a 'kind of nothing'. Symmetry cannot be anything less than a > >>> feature of sense. > >> I can if I explicitly say what kind it is - which I did. > > Your reduction reduces symmetry to be no different from asymmetry. > > Asymmetry is invariant under some transformation also. You have only > > made the word symmetry meaningless. > > Symmetry isn't a thing and asymmetry isn't either. It's not a thing in the sense of being an object, no, but it is a qualitative property of pattern recognition. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
