Dear John, list,
I have heard that we, the general public, have contempt for experts. If by that, it is meant that we do not have high regard for arguments “that take more than one step”, I tend to agree.. Well, more than three steps, in general; for abstrusity tends to count against experts. On the other hand, experts are not experts in all matters. And especially on matters relating to things political. For if there are such experts, then show them to me. And this question of God is of the utmost political matter. So then, do me a favor and extend to me your offer to JAS. Show me what EGs can do on the matter of this question of God. In what way is God the Sign or the Object, according to EGs? In what way is the word “God,” so “capitalized” *the* definable proper name, signifying *Ens necessarium*; in my belief Really creator of all three Universes of Experience, according to EGs? For I am of the persuasion that I count myself among the careless cavillers who might say, “what, then, precisely, is your neglected argument?” With best wishes, Jerry R On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 1:27 PM John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> wrote: > Edwina and Gary R, > > I endorse Edwina's caveats. Her examples are among the "puffy clouds" > that create ambiguities in any reasoning stated in ordinary language. > After half a century of using and inventing symbolic logics, Peirce > could keep the distinctions clear in his own mind, but any excerpt > from his writings could easily be ambiguous when taken out of context. > > That's why formal logic is essential to clarify any reasoning that > relates quotations from different MSS. > > GR > > I truly doubt that Jon needs your "help," while insulting and > > hubristic comments such as saying that if he refuses to accept your > > "help" that he has "nothing but a puffy cloud of words" is, in my > > opinion, below any serious scholar's dignity. > > When it comes to logic, I treat Jon as a student. He's not happy > when I say that, so I haven't said that recently. Instead, I stated > the most appropriate analogy for his style of reasoning: "puffy > clouds of words". If that's considered insulting, I'll just give > him a "gentleman's C". > > Ambiguities are the primary reason why words, by themselves, can > be misleading. Even in Peirce's technical vocabulary, there are > ambiguities in the words 'subject' (grammatical or logical) and > 'universe' (the universe of discourse on the sheet of assertion > or one of the three modalities -- possible, actual, necessary). > > The sheet of assertion, as a piece of paper, is in the universe > of actuality. But the universe of discourse represented by the > EGs on that paper is an abstraction in the universe of possibilities. > No matter where God may be, any statement about God that is written > on that paper exists in actuality, and its universe of discourse > is in the universe of possibility. > > Those distinctions provide enough universe-like combinations to > support any talk about God or anything else. Another realm for > God is both semeiotically unnecessary and anti=Peircean. > > I admit that Jon has done good work in studying Peirce and relating > passages from various MSS. But when he draws inferences that go > beyond anything Peirce said, there is usually a good reason why > Peirce did not make those inferences. It's important to ask why. > > It's not acceptable to attribute any position to Peirce that > he did not explicitly state -- for example, the assumption that > anything could or even must exist outside his three universes. > > Since Gary questioned my qualifications to grade Jon's claims, > I'll summarize a few points. I spent 30 years in R & D at IBM, > where I used math & logic for projects in AI, computational > linguistics, and parsers and inference engines. I published > papers and books and taught courses at IBM and elsewhere. > > In 1987, for example, I taught a graduate course at Stanford in the > Computer Science Dept., which also had many students in linguistics. > The only prerequisite was "knowledge of first-order logic and natural > language syntax". For the course description and student evaluations: > http://jfsowa.com/pubs/su309a.pdf . Note that my rating was higher > than the average for the CS department in nearly all categories. > > For the first homework assignment, the students were supposed to > translate 10 English sentences to first-order logic. None of the > sentences had any syntactic or semantic ambiguities. There were > about 30 students in the class, but only one student got all 10 > sentences correct. He was a post-doc, who had just finished his > PhD in linguistics and was just auditing the course. > > For more recent work, see the 73-page article on "Reasoning with > diagrams and images", which was published in 2018 in the Journal > of Applied Logics, vol. 5:5, pp. 987-1059 of > http://www.collegepublications.co.uk/downloads/ifcolog00025.pdf > > Re helping Jon to translate Peirce's statements to EGs: I meant > that offer in all sincerity. I doubt that Jon could correctly > translate the relevant quotations from Peirce to EGs or any other > version of symbolic logic. Note that Stanford graduate students > in computer science or linguistics couldn't do that. > > In any case, I would be pleasantly surprised if Jon could translate > the relevant quotations by Peirce to EGs. If he can't do that, I > would automatically dismiss any of his claims about any arguments > that take more than one step. > > John >
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