brent1

um............so, who's been threatening you with hellfire?

patience. . . . a reply is in order I do admit. . . .as of now it will have to wait for I have other things of importance. . . . term paper deadlines tend to take precedence, sorry; but I do value your comments.

s t e r e o t y p e, anyone? I suppose you could tell me what my favorite Bible character is as well?

your phantom, brent

Sun Dog

Nobody in this thread, if that's what you mean. However, in the thirteen years that I've been an atheist, I've been threatened with hellfire dozens of times during my conversations with Christians. A few even offered to help speed up my arrival, if you know what I mean. My point to John was that while I don't necessarily agree with (or even understand) everything he says, I still find his attitude a refreshing change of pace from the fire-and-brimstone crowd.

That's fine. Believe me, I know all about deadlines. I was afraid you'd dropped out of the thread completely; I'm glad to know you're still around.

Not a stereotype so much as a tentatively held conclusion based on personal experience coupled with anecdotal evidence. Of course, despite the exaggerated language, I don't actually believe all presuppositionalists are like this. I would assume there are many exceptions; I simply haven't found one yet.

Incidentally, thank you for confirming that you are indeed a presuppositionalist. Over the years I've developed a sixth sense that is akin to "gaydar", only it detects presuppositionalists instead of gay people. It's good to know that it's still as reliable as ever.

Of course: Jesus. And I'd bet money that your least favorite character is Satan.

(Oh, come on-- you had to see that one coming! )

John Page

Yes and yes.
But all procedures have intrinsic rules....
You have two A's in the proposition, one could be true and the other false. "A is both true and false" is conventionally a tighter contradiction but not in all systems of logic.
The phenomenon that I interpret as a contradiction exists. If I can make it go away by thinking about it, that mean the contradiction only existed in my mind. I can only eliminate the contradiction in your mind by causing or prompting a change in your thougth patterns. From this, I offer my understanding of the nature of contradictions - the option of "leaving things as they were" is one that I take when I run out of time to think about this issue.

Gotta run.....

Cheers, John

Sun Dog

Probably true, but I'm not sure why it's relevant here. My point was that you cannot refer to a procedure as contradictory, for the simple reason that a procedure is not a set of beliefs-- it's a set of instructions. It's a category mistake that I'm pointing out-- you can't call a procedure contradictory any more than you can call an odor colorful.

Lest this seem like an attempt to insulate my procedure from criticism, I should point out that you can criticize a procedure on other grounds. For instance, you might point out that a given procedure doesn't achieve a given purpose, or that there are other procedures that can achieve the same result with greater accuracy and/or more efficiency. And if a given paradigm contains beliefs pertaining to the procedure, you can always criticize the paradigm as being contradictory. Just not the procedure itself.

The convention is that the variable A (or any other variable, for that matter) always means the same thing in the same context, no matter how many times it's used. (It's a good convention, too-- without it, you'd be constantly wondering which A stood for what.) So while there may be two A's in my formulation, they always have the same meaning, so one cannot be true while the other is false. Your own "tighter" contradiction has exactly the same meaning as my own; it just uses fewer words.

Hope this helps clarify things.

John Page

Sun Dog:

Yes, I have a tendency to regard everything as a process by default. For example we perceive data and that data is intrinsically part of a process - so if the data is contradictory I call to process that spawned it a contradiction.

In a worldview where a process is measured by eternal, immutable data you're absolutely correct - the results are contradictory and not the process as I'd stated.
I could be picky by saying that if they have the same meaning they must be identical and we could carry on the debate. (A Monty Python line comes to mind - ....and what do we mean by what do we mean...).

My underlying point is that for logic to be useful we must lie to ourselves by saying that the *actual* thing that we mean must be identical to some other *actual* thing that we mean. We can only make sense of our environment by confering identities - this way our memory handling becomes very efficient because each new object/experience needs very few data to be cataloged e.g. telephone, like Joe's, on desk, afternoon meeting, monday etc. indeed, since some of these elements will be common to other memories (for example, stuff that happened at that meeting) the meeting charateristics can become its own entity. (Hope that's reasonably clear).

The point of my digression is to show how our minds need to use such deception as A is A whereas the real process is one of categorizing - What's this? It looks most like an A....

Cheers, John

Sun Dog

Why would I want to debate that? That's precisely my point! The two A's in the proposition I mentioned are identical! In the proposition "A is true and A is false", both A's represent the exact same identical proposition-- whatever that proposition might happen to be. If A is "God exists", then the original proposition would become "'God exists' is true and 'God exists' is false". If A is "peanut butter tastes good", then the original proposition becomes "'peanut butter tastes good' is true and 'peanut butter tastes good' is false." And so forth. So, yes, both instances of A have the same meaning, precisely because they are identical.

John Page

Sun Dog:

We drift apart again! Both A's represent the same generic form of words having the noun "proposition". Remember, no two things are identical (LOI).

They could be said to be identical in form but this can also perpetuate the argument - if there are two separate forms to be compared, how could they be identical?

Cheers, John

Sun Dog

But there aren't two separate propositions in the statement "A is true and A is false". There are two references to a single proposition. Whatever that proposition actually is, both A's refer to it.

To be sure, the two references are not identical in every respect-- after all, one of them occurs earlier in the sentence and one occurs later. But the proposition to which they point is the same for both of them. If you want two different propositions, you need to introduce a second variable, such as A' or B.

Now to be sure, this is all "just" a convention used by philosophers, logicians, and rabble rousers such as myself. If you wanted to, you could create your own convention in which the variables are "slippery", so that the same variable doesn't always mean the same thing in the same context. But why would you want to? What advantages would there be to such a system, and would they outweigh the disadvantages? (And there would be disadvantages, the first one being that you'd never be able to develop any general principles of reasoning at all. Just try constructing a modus tollens argument using slippery variables if you don't believe me.) Using the current conventions of logic, we've been able to figure out how to take dirt and build computers out of it. Do you think that a form of logic based on slippery variables would prove equally powerful?

John Page

I don't see it as a separate form of logic, just a clearer picture of what logical operations really entail. The variables are "slippery" whether we like it or not.

Here's a table using "slippery" notation that avoids violating the LOI in it represenational format by uniquly identifying each variable by a prefix - r0 for the thing being represented (so r0T stands for the actual truth) and then r1, r2 etc for other instances.

Axiom Name,Conventional, Slippery
Law of Identity,T=T, r0T=r1T
Law of Non-Contradiction,T=(T or ~T),r0T=(r1T or ~r2T)
Law of the Excluded Middle,T=~(T and ~T),r0T=~(r1T and ~r2T)

How is slippery notation useful. Here's its application to the Liar Paradox:
Modus Tollens.
P=>Q
~Q
~P

Consider the truth table for this as the reality that we are going to judge Modus Tollens against. The opening statement becomes "if it is true that (P is true then Q is true) and if it is true that (Q is false) then it is true that (P is false)." In slippery notation "if (if r1P then r1Q) then ~r2Q then ~r2P" which can then be resolved by testing against "reality" which is the relevant truth table. Modus Tollens is therefore true with respect to that truth table, if we keep the truth table fixed the Modus Tollens rule will remain valid.

I have no issue with logic assuming that truth values are homogenous in a similar manner to math assuming that quantities are homogenous. However, if you look at a real system for determining logic such as a computer or a human mind these systems compare and quantify - they do not magically make things identical.

Hope this makes sense!

Cheers, John

cobrashock

Sun Dog and John- It seems we have lost our original poster. I wouldn't have missed this thread for nothing . I'm new here and still trying to figger the folks out. Looks like you two won, or in the very least we have serious thread drift.
John- You have a interesting world view and that is the reason I joined this forum, to break new ground.
Sun Dog- Your thesis on the second page with John is nearly identical with my own thoughts. It was explained about as well as it could be, at least to my way of thinking.
Looks like I am going to have to watch my wording in future on posts when I evoke the "laws of physics". Yes I know that the laws of physics is a subjective interpitation and representation of certain events. (not objective) Discussing the laws of physics to me has always been objective though in the past with my contemporarys as my background is in life sciences (35years) together with a mammoth taste for astronomy. Some of those discussion habits will die hard I fear.
cobrashock, Ron Shockley