SUO: *Date 08 Apr 2002 -- Logical Languages, Auld, Bony, Braw, Dory, Eith, Hyte, & Unco

[Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>]

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Logical Languages:  Auld, Bony, Braw, Dory, Eith, Hyte, & Unco

JA = Jon Awbrey
JS = John Sowa
JN = Jaime Nubiola

I used to think that a standard for something was supposed to help
make things better, even to push to the edge and nudge innovation
a bit among the more adventurous, not to canonize the status quo
and lock the flocks into the lowest common denominator of the
common practices and the common mal-practices of the times.

Oh well.

But here are some other problems that I have noticed arising
again in the wider discussion, just when I thought that we
had stamped the little beasties out.

A large number of the problems come under the heading of
"identification", "projection", or "transference" errors.

Logic is a normative science.  Depending on your point of view,
it is analogous to, dependent on, or a special case of the other
two normative sciences of ethics and aesthetics, broadly conceived.

In regard to logic proper, people tend to confuse the science
with its instruments.  A normative science is the search and
even the rescue sometimes of a knowledge about what we ought
to do if we wish to achieve the designated desiderata of that
science.  The instruments are the various artifacts of apparatus
that human beings craft and develop, through evolution and design,
in pursuit of that science, for instance, the languages, formal
and informal, that we use for the sake of pursuing that science.

In this light, even a simple thing like the term "FOL" is being used
with many discrepant implications.  It ought to mean a constraint on
formal languages, or the class of languages that fit the constraint,
in just the way that we talk about "finite state" or "context free"
formal languages.  But it has come to be an overwhelmingly common
practice to identify the general idea with a few of its exemplars,
with no due examination of how well they prototype their class or
embody its ideal features.  Worse yet, for the sake of clarity,
the term has become the "standard", or the "rally flag", of one
particular point of view on how to use logic in AI research.

I suggest that it might help things
if we undid these identifications.

And the chances of that?

You know the reply ...

Jon Awbrey

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JS: I said that you have to start where the students are, but I didn't
    say that you have to leave them there.  And what you say to different
    students depends on many factors:  (1) their willingness to listen,
    (2) their ability to absorb the information, (3) their ability to
    take large steps, small steps, or baby steps, (4) how much work
    they are willing to do on their own, (5) their motivation, and most
    importantly (6) their ability to discover new things on their own.
    And as Peirce himself said of some of his listeners, "Oh, well."

JA: I will merely summate by telling you more of what you already know,
    that you can build all the bridges you want, but you will not
    goad or gadfly anybody across the pons asinorum by
    supporting their smug illusions that they have
    already virtually arrived on the other side.

JS: Indeed, many people don't even know that there is another side.
    That is sometimes the hardest message to communicate.  But in
    any case, an ISO standards document is not the place to convince
    anybody of anything.  Its sole purpose is to serve as a reference
    for implementers who have already been convinced (either by their
    own convictions or by the salary they are paid for doing the job).

JA: This is the strategy that Morris tried with
    Peirce's semiotics, and you know how well
    that turned out -- I can't imagine that
    you imagine that the same technique
    will work any better for his logic.

JS: Morris failed for many different reasons.  The main reason
    is that he didn't understand logic.  That meant that he really
    didn't understand either Peirce or Carnap (the chief person
    he failed to convince).  Since he didn't fully understand
    Peirce, he couldn't communicate CSP's ideas adequately to
    anyone (as is obvious from his writings).  Since he didn't
    understand Carnap, he couldn't correct Carnap's mistakes.
    In short, Morris couldn't find either Peirce's end of the
    bridge or Carnap's, so he was hopeless as a guide.

JS: Then another major reason for Morris's failure was the poor
    quality of the editing of Peirce's 'Collected Papers', which
    were collected by two people who also didn't understand logic.
    The papers were scattered throughout the many volumes in such
    an order that they wouldn't impress a logician who wasn't already
    inclined to take them seriously.  That includes both Carnap and
    Quine, who already believed that the true religion had come down
    from Frege.

JS: The major tragedy for both logic and philosophy in the 20th century was the
    premature death of Frank Ramsey.  Ramsey was a brilliant mathematician and
    logician who really understood Peirce.  He is the one who communicated
    enough of CSP's ideas to Wittgenstein to enable W. to see that his
    entire early philosophy (as well as Russell's, Frege's, and the
    whole Vienna Circle's) was a dead end.  Unfortunately, Ramsey
    died before he could convince anyone else and before he
    could get W. to read more of Peirce's writings.

JS: I'm sure that you have read Jaime Nubiola's article about the
    relations between Peirce, Ramsey, and Wittgenstein, but for
    anyone else who may be interested, following is the URL:

JN: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/nubiola/scholar.htm

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