On 03/10/2015 08:17 PM, Carl Tollander wrote: > This may throw something (light?) on the issue. > > http://cheng.staff.shef.ac.uk/morality/morality.pdf
"I wonder if there are there any moralists who are applied mathematicians?" Absolutely! And moralist physicians, physicists, truck drivers, and glass blowers. I wasn't convinced "morality" was a good term for the concept until the phrase: "Asking 'Why?' is like asking what the moral of the story is." At that point, I softened a bit to the idea. But I still think it's wrong. The author is seeking something more like unification or coherence. (Cheng even expresses threads of unity throughout the paper.) Using the word "morality" for this is abuse of the term... perhaps only a small abuse, though.... a little white lie that makes their lives easier ... an immorally moral act. > The reason I'm tossing this in may not become apparent until a ways into it, > when mathematical "morality" notions are used to address abstraction. They (and the author) clearly just stole the word and redefined it irresponsibly. It's a great example of the evils of jargon. And I think it's not only reasonable, but _moral_, actually moral, for the philosophers to object to the theft. I guess I kinda see it as akin to trademarks. Whoever has put the most meaning and effort into a term has rights to it. Philosophers have a much more refined and pedigreed definition of "morality" than that laid out in the article for mathematical morality. Hence, it's clear who's doing the thieving. I'll leave it to metaphorfiliacs to render an opinion on whether mathematical morality is a metaphor. But it's certainly an abuse of the word. Just to be clear, I'm a huge fan of abusing artifacts. Abuse brings out the best in all artifacts. E.g. circuit bending, hacking, reverse engineering, whittling with an axe, hammering with a screwdriver, flipping your guitar upside down, ... Everything is permitted! Embrace Error! I'm less of a fan of the abuse of persons... but I admit that even that type of abuse can have surprisingly positive outcomes. And I can't help but appreciate the layers of Cheng's rhetoric. And one thing is fundamentally clear, math is not science, math is not the science of analogy ... such an onion of abuse! Whew! I swoon. ;-) -- ⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella If there's something left of my spirit ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
