This was kind of enlightening, too, on hackernews yesterday, in the vein of 'Dude, what happened to liberalism?'
https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/the-marketplace-of-misleading-ideas >From a marketplace of ideas to a marketplace of rationalizations is such a small shift, like one of those blink-and-it-flips optical illusions, blink, blink, .... -- rec -- On Tue, Jul 23, 2024 at 2:06 AM Eric Smith <desm...@santafe.edu> wrote: > This feels incomplete to me in a fundamental way. I am sure I will say > the next thing badly, so will stay short. > > I understand what “truth” is as a Boolean value propagated by rules within > a formal system. > > For me to participate in the use of the tokens and rules of the formal > system — including “participate in” in the sense of taking on its habits to > organize where my attention or internal deliberations go — seems to involve > another class of events that I would call “choices” for lack of an > obviously better term. > > The formal system (whether syntactic, a la Hilbert, or more constructivist > in its semantics) is relatively sparse, which is one of the reasons we can > scan it for consistency. > > Meanwhile, the program of living, including all its events of choosing, is > not contained within the formal system. Alongside the formal system, the > program of living as it is realized is yet-another thing in the world, of a > different kind. > > Truth as something formally propagated within the machinery of the formal > system is not something I recognize as being transportable across the > bridge that is built from choices. Whatever we want to ratify those > choices, or commend them to others, seems to need other terms. Not that we > couldn’t have used “truth” for that (though it would be way overloaded); > only that if we want to use “truth” in the narrower formal sense, we would > do ourselves a favor not to adopt exactly the same word to refer to some > other value that is wildly different in its nature. > > For some empiricist applications, “validity” seems an appropriate word. > But then validation also turns on choices, of how the “cookbook” aspects of > our formal language get agreed upon to look at things in a certain way, or > to build machines and read readings from them and consent to what moves > those readings pick out in the next applications of the formal system. > > For a “way of looking” that is communicated to me (a slave boy) to allow > me to complete certain thoughts on my own (about Pythagorean theorem > proofs) in the same ways as others would complete them, seems to be a way > my choices of activity can be scaffolded through language that others use > to point out things they have discovered it is possible to do. The formal > system, I, and the teacher are things in the world, and the teacher can > coordinate experiences with me by way of the formal system. > > > I have found Dave’s last couple of posts very helpful. I have a > colleague, whom I often-not-so-affectionately refer to as The Mystic, who I > think is trying to relay or reflect many of the same systems of thought > that Dave does. But The Mystic enjoys being obscure for its own sake so > much that I have not succeeded in making head or tail of much of what he > has said for quite some time. Dave’s willingness to use manners of > speaking from the analytic world, while emphasizing that they are > deliberately not the native vernacular of the system from which he is > speaking, is helpful. > > There’s a kind of interesting article, here: > > https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Courses/2023%20Sellars/Sellars%20texts/The_Pragmatist_Enlightenment_and_its_Pro.pdf > > I think that the lessons of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, limited as > they are, should be helpful guides in turning Pragmatism onto itself as its > target. One could revisit the exchanges between Quine and Carnap, but from > a perspective decades on, and try to be at the same time cautious but also > responsible about the thick layer of experience where they seemed to just > walk off the field and go home. Maybe Putnam did it better. I haven’t > looked much into him. > > Eric > > > > On Jul 23, 2024, at 12:32 PM, Nicholas Thompson <thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > Hi Jon, > > As a Peircean, I neverdoubted it for a minute. A true ;roposition is one > upon which we will agree in the very long run. A real thing is any concept > about which a true proposition can be uttered. I think that makes > numbers, and right triangles real given that 3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2 and that the > squire upon the hippopotamus is equal to the son of the squires on the > other two hides. So they are real even though we will neverever touch one. > > Weird. > > Nick > ------------------------------ > *From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of Jon Zingale < > jonzing...@gmail.com> > *Sent:* Monday, July 22, 2024 6:22 PM > *To:* friam@redfish.com <friam@redfish.com> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] New Mexican's Sunday's story on education > proficiency > > Numbers are real things. 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